


Not Justice

by izanyas



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Depression, Developing Relationships, Ensemble Cast, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Spoilers for Durarara!!SH
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8489500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izanyas/pseuds/izanyas
Summary: What’s weird isn’t that Yahiro thinks Orihara Izaya should come back; it's that he's not the only one who does. The solution to this problem is obvious to him. But those who share the same idea don't necessarily share the same goals... and Izaya himself is as alive as ever. As destructive as ever. Brimming with potential to make everything worse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Off we go... my attempt at fixing the mess Izaya's made of himself and of Ikebukuro. This is shaping up to be a long one, and I will try my best to update at least once every three weeks.
> 
> You don't need to have read Drrr!!SH to read it, but I still recommend taking a look at the wiki pages for Yahiro and Kuon or their parts in this might be a little obscure. They're woefully incomplete, though, so having read SH is probably better anyway. Plus, this is going to have spoilers.  
> This story starts right after Kuon and Yahiro's confrontation at the end of SHx3 and is an AU for everything thereafter. I don't have a beta so my apologies for typos and mistakes.
> 
> Chapter warnings: references to child abuse, and discussion of an adult assaulting a minor (specifically Namie kissing Mika in Ten).

**Not Justice  
** **Chapter 1**

"That's not enough," Yahiro said. "If you truly want to help Nozomi, if you want her to go back to the way she was before—then becoming a new Orihara Izaya isn't enough."

Kuon looked staticky, electric. In the dark of the night the dye had bled out of his hair and left it looking as black as the picture on Kuronuma Aoba's phone.

"You need to become even better than him," he said.

Kuon smiled, and begged, "Punch me."

So Yahiro did. He let the lull of violence take over him the way it had weeks ago on that rooftop, when Celty shrouded him in shadow, when he took down dozens with only his bare hands and liquid fear burning in his stomach. But there was only Kuon here, and Kuon was perhaps the first person Yahiro had not been scared of—and even as his fist made contact with the boy's cheek it was with some softness, without the strength of his shoulder behind it. For the first time in his life, Yahiro held back.

 

* * *

 

Yahiro's phone rang when he was a street away from his own building. He took it out of his pocket and fidgeted for a moment before opening it, and when he did the screen was lit up on Kuronuma Aoba's name.

"Where's Kuon?" Kuronuma said snappily before Yahiro could put in a word.

"Home," Yahiro answered. "He's sleeping, I think. Or at least resting. Maybe he's in too much pain to sleep. Probably."

"He was injured?"

"He asked me to punch him."

There was a pause. "I see."

Yahiro didn't think he did. Maybe that was presumptuous of him, though, so he said nothing.

"Did he tell you anything about what happened?" Kuronuma asked, a little more softly.

"He told me that he used me," was all Yahiro said.

_That's fine, then_ , he had told Kuon. And it was. Everything was fine, as long as Kuon didn't make that face again, the one he did just after that—like a wounded animal, like he was bleeding out of his every pore but too prideful to ask for help.

Yahiro was no stranger to fear. He didn't think he had ever felt it the way Kuon or Himeka did, though.

"I'm surprised you let him off with just a punch, then."

Yahiro wasn't very sure what Kuronuma of all people knew about that, so he stayed silent again. After a while Kuronuma seemed to understand this.

"Well," he said. "I'll leave you to it, then."

Yahiro considered his options for a second. And then he said: "Senpai, what do you know about Orihara Izaya?"

The breath Kuronuma sucked in came in like so much static, and he made an ugly little sound low in his throat that made Yahiro's ear crushed against his phone prickle instinctively.

"Sorry," Yahiro said.

"Don't apologize if you don't mean it."

Yahiro closed his mouth, since his tone of voice was apparently betraying him again. He was at the bottom of his apartment building now, and Togusa's van was here, glinting under the yellow lamp of the parking lot. He leaned against the wall next to the outdoor stairs.

"You're one for unburying things," Kuronuma grumbled. "I can see why Mi—" he paused. "Well, anyway. Orihara Izaya is dead."

"I thought he was just missing," Yahiro replied, frowning at the dark street in front of him.

"Everyone who thinks that is an idiot. There's no way he could've survived after that fight."

Yahiro hadn't expected that. "What fight?"

"Never mind," Kuronuma cut in. "I don't like thinking about that man if I can help it, and neither should you."

"So no one knows for sure if he's alive or not?"

"Mizuchi," Kuronuma said darkly. Yahiro's fingers pressed a little tighter against the case of his phone, his palm growing wet against the plastic. "If you value your life, you won't go digging into this."

Kuronuma really did not know him very well, Yahiro thought. Unlike Himeka and Kuon. "How dangerous are we talking, here?" he asked.

"Heiwajima Shizuo was the one who killed him," Kuronuma answered.

And Yahiro did feel his blood freeze at this, fright and adrenaline coming alive under his skin until his sight bled into a white haze. Then he breathed; and the fear abated, coming undone under the familiar weight of guilt. It settled in his stomach and grew.

He still hadn't apologized to Heiwajima Shizuo for hurting him. He still hadn't explained himself for attacking the man at all.

"I didn't think he was the kind to kill anyone," he said softly.

"Orihara Izaya always thought himself an exception to the rules, and for once in his life, he was." There was a lot going on in Kuronuma's voice, an anger more deeply-set than his usual display of nerves and heat. Maybe he sensed it himself, because he cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his tone was lighter. "Anyway. Though Heiwajima is probably the most volatile person to talk to about Orihara, he won't go after you for sneaking around. But the yakuza will. And trust me," he voice shook a little on the word, "you don't want that."

_Have you sneaked around, Kuronuma?_ Yahiro didn't ask. "Thank you for the advice."

"Yeah. Whatever."

For a moment neither of them talked. The night air was warm on Yahiro's skin, the electric light not as blinding as it had been a few minutes ago. He stared at the empty eyes of the anime character on Togusa's van's door.

"I…"

Yahiro blinked. "Sorry. Did you say something?"

"No," Kuronuma said. But then, "Yes. Listen. You know the Orihara twins."

"I do." Though he preferred to avoid them if he could.

"Yeah. I can only tell you what I saw that night—and I saw Orihara Izaya getting beaten to the brink of death. I don't know why it happened, and Orihara disappeared before I could _see_ him die. But he couldn't have survived those wounds," and his tone was final again, "not unless he immediately checked into a hospital. Which he didn't. I know, I looked."

"Okay," Yahiro said.

"This said," Kuronuma continued. " _If_ he is alive, Mairu and Kururi are probably your best shot at finding him."

"I thought they hadn't had any news from him either."

"They haven't. They know someone who definitely has, though. If he's alive, that is, which would be the worst news I've heard in the past year."

Yahiro ran his thumb over the scars on his knuckles. "This is a little obscure," he commented.

"Just call them," Kuronuma sighed. "They're probably still up anyway."

"Isn't that a little insensitive? Calling them just to ask about their maybe-dead brother?"

Kuronuma let out a laugh. "They won't care."

He hung up without another word. Yahiro kept the phone to his ear for a while anyway, even though the screen was sliding off his skin every time he moved and his arm was starting to ache.

He knew he still had the ghost of paranoia in him from the serial attacks in the city. And there was the issue of figuring out exactly what he wanted out of this conversation, out of Orihara Izaya's name that he kept hearing as if the man had dug a hole in the city that everyone he knew couldn't help stumbling around. It was on Kuon's tongue like bile and on Kuronuma's like fire. On Nozomi's like adoration.

And now it was on Yahiro's mind.

Yahiro didn't know Orihara Izaya. He didn't know what he looked like, what he acted like, what it was about him that made him save two orphans and then leave them behind until one lost her mind and the other built himself into the man's shadow. There was nothing for Yahiro to _gain_ from understanding Orihara Izaya, who was probably dead and definitely didn't want to be around anymore if he wasn't.

He had come to Ikebukuro out of selfish intentions. To witness monsters, so that he could tell himself he wasn't the worst thing to have been born on earth. To watch their lives, so that he could convince himself that he had a right to happiness and normalcy as well. He had carelessly treaded onto the lives that Heiwajima Shizuo and the Headless Rider had painstakingly built for themselves, and he still didn't think that he deserved forgiveness for it. He had acted with them the way people in his hometown acted with him. The shame of it burned deep in his stomach.

Kuronuma had taken his questions to mean that he wanted to find Orihara Izaya, though Yahiro had made no mention of this. He hadn't even thought about it when he asked. He just wanted to understand Kuon a little better.

Now, he thought, bringing his phone to eye-level and scrolling down his short list of contacts to Mairu and Kururi's names, he didn't think it was just about Kuon anymore.

Heiwajima Shizuo and Celty were one thing. They were good people, with good lives, who were only trying their best. They were friends. They just wanted peace. Yahiro had judged them and attacked them with no previous knowledge of who they really were—and, though he was loath to push blame anywhere but on himself, with a bit of a push in the back from Kuon.

All accounts had depicted Orihara Izaya as a terrible person, though. The kind one might truly qualify as monstrous.

It was tempting, still, the idea of seeing what a real monster looked like.

 

* * *

 

Namie's life in Boston wasn't any better or worse than it had been in Ikebukuro. Maybe worse because she wanted to improve her English as much as she wanted to pull out her own toenails one by one. She mostly stayed confined inside Kishitani's lab, and her hotel room after the same security guard threw her out every night. She slept badly. She ate badly. She bought expensive coffee beans that she never took the time to brew and survived mostly off of cheap espresso and spite, and if the espresso decreased in taste every time she drank it at least her spite stayed just as sour at the back of her tongue.

If it had only been up to her she would've stayed in Japan. She was adult enough to acknowledge it. Maybe in Ikebukuro, though there was little for her there; maybe she would have moved into Izaya's empty Shikuju apartment that she still had the key to; or maybe—and the thought felt like acid reflux—maybe she would have followed Izaya himself, wherever he was now.

But the head had come to America, and Seiji went wherever the head went, and therefore Namie did as well.

She was looking at it now, sat at the very back room of the lab that only Kishitani and herself had access to. It floated in its aquarium-like glass box and stared at nothing, and only the twist of its mouth betrayed the last expression it had worn before Kishitani's freak of a son cut it off from its body again. Horror and sorrow.

"Go home, Namie-kun," Kishitani said to her from his side of the glass.

Namie spin her pen between trembling fingers. "I think not," she replied.

"Darling," Emilia started, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Please don't mistake my husband's words for worry. You look rather bad, and you don't smell too good either, if I may. It's really more for everyone else's comfort than yours."

August had dragged by hot and damp, with its share of insomnia and lack of energy. Namie knew she looked bad. She was sweaty, she was hungry, she hadn't showered in days. Her face was probably as white as the walls around them except for the circles around her eyes and the greasy shine on her nose.

"You have a way with words," she said under breath.

"Thank you," Emilia replied brightly.

Still, she knew her being here wouldn't make much of a difference either way. It hadn't in the last twenty months or so.

Kishitani started babbling to his wife once it was clear Namie wasn't going to deign say anything else, and through the now-constant ringing in her ears she caught something about sewers. She felt exhaustion drop on her and hollow out her insides, so she stood up and said, "I'm leaving."

"Do take a shower, please," Kishitani replied uncaringly.

Some bite awoke in her at that, but not enough to actually answer him.

The way from the lab to her hotel was a short one. She didn't bother taking off her lab coat for it, a little because it made her look severe and professional instead of rather unkempt, and a little because she just didn't have the energy to. She'd wash it at the hotel's laundry room that night. She walked through the sticky evening air without looking around herself at all, not even when one of Kishitani's weird interns yelled some kind of salutation at her. Two years ago she would've flipped him off.

She kicked dirty clothes off of her way once she entered her room. They weren't _quite_ littering the entire floor space—the room was big enough for that, way bigger than the one she had inhabited while working for Izaya—but it was starting to look a bit alarming. She threw her coat on the desk chair above two other sweaters that had been there since April and headed into the en suite.

The shower did feel good, she thought grudgingly. The steam cleared her head a bit, leaving her a little appalled that she had let herself become so inactive. In the end she used more hot water than was absolutely proper, and as she stepped out to dry herself and thought about energy and water waste, she felt a little vindicated.

She took the time to actually make coffee herself. Her entire body felt too warm, and the open window did nothing to attract fresher winds her way, but she drank the entire mug before it had time to cool, until her mouth was numb to the burn. She ran her tongue on the edges of her teeth; she was sure she could cut herself like this and bleed out, and she wouldn't even feel it.

Her phone buzzed while she was opening her laptop. It was a text from Harima, saying, _We still meeting tonight?_

_Yes_ , she answered curtly. She swore quietly under her breath when her laptop froze, and hit it quickly on the side in the hope it would actually start. Maybe it was time to buy a new one. Or have someone repair this relic.

_I wanna try the new French place in front of Seiji's apartment!_ Harima sent back. Then a row of emojis that blurred into a single entity of unreadable characters in front of Namie's tired eyes.

Namie didn't answer.

Checking her emails usually took her a short time. Kishitani may be part of a super-secret research program, but he still had students—and those students and himself seemed to think Namie was a sort of assistant, which meant that they tended to contact her at every hour of the day or night over the slightest inconvenience. She was used to this sort of work but she found no enjoyment in it—not that she found enjoyment in research either anymore—so she generally deleted everything off the bat except for a very few things.

The only read message sitting in her inbox was from Izaya. It was two weeks old now, and after a quick look at it, she decided to leave it for the following day. Every time she read it she felt the same kind of nervous and uncomfortable and a little offended.

If he really wanted to talk, he would call.

She groaned and leaned back into her chair, stretching her shoulders until her back cracked loudly. The hand she ran over her face was shaking a little from hunger, which was starting to crawl up her inside like nausea again. Black coffee wasn't enough to sustain her, and she knew it, but lately it was hard to find the energy for much else besides takeout.

She opened one of the two messages she hadn't deleted on sight and tried to chase all thoughts of Izaya from her mind.

They came back once she read it.

For a moment she stared at her screen unseeingly; then her mouth closed painfully, and her heartbeat sped up until she could feel it at her throat. She flicked her eyes up to the sender, but the name wasn't anyone she knew.

She still had access to Izaya's old online files. She still knew all the passwords. She could—

Someone knocked at her door before she did anything. She jumped out of her chair, and her hand flew over to the drawer of her desk where she kept her knife. It was a little dusty when she took it out, and it slipped from her fingers and clattered on top of the desk; but she managed to grab it firmly at last, and when she opened her door without unlocking the privacy chain she had enough adrenaline in her to use it.

Harima was standing in the hallway. "I'm a little early," she said with a smile.

Namie's grip relaxed a little. "A little," she repeated.

"Only two hours. I was right outside the hotel when I texted you, and I _really_ want to drag you to that restaurant." Harima took a step forward and tugged on the chain, smiling a little mockingly. "Are you naked, Namie-san? You should've told me you were in that sort of mood."

"I'm _not_ , you insufferable child."

Namie closed the door in Harima's face right as she was opening her mouth to speak. It would've been satisfying if she didn't still feel like the was reeling from being punched.

She put the knife back on top of her desk a little weakly. Now that Harima was here she didn't have time to look into anything, so she typed _Who gave you this address_ as quickly as she could and hit send before her brain hit regret. She stepped into the first pair of heels she could find and opened her door again. Predictably, Harima was eye-level with where the lock was.

"Your place is filthy," she commented, dragging her eyes quickly over what she could see behind Namie's legs. Then she smiled again, and looked up. "You're not, though."

"You're as disgusting as ever," Namie replied.

Harima grinned.

The restaurant ended up being a long way farther than just "in front of Seiji's place". Ten minutes into their walk Namie was longing for flats and Harima was chuckling, the line of her collar outrageously low on her chest so that the fake scars on her neck were displayed proudly. People stared at her as she walked, and therefore at Namie too—and though Harima always thrived in being the center of all attention Namie never developed a taste for it. She tripped Harima at the entrance of the restaurant when they finally arrived.

It didn't even look that fancy, she thought, looking around the lobby and to the dining room behind on the side. Just new and still sparkling-clean.

With newness came interested customers, so their wait was long after they ordered their food. Namie's English was bad and her French was non-existent; she let Harima pick her meal for her, which the girl did with an ominous smile. The waiter was not as unfazed by her blatant flirtation as Namie was—he blushed a little while talking to her, and Namie watched him with disgust crawling as familiar as comfort under her skin. Once he was gone Harima looked at her again.

"So," she said.

"Yes?"

Harima rested her chin on one hand. "Don't you want my report?"

For a moment Namie didn't understand what she was referring to. Her thoughts were still on the message in her inbox, the question framed so polite and inconspicuous that she couldn't help feeling as if some assassin was going to jump on her from any shadow. She almost asked, _What report?_ but as she opened her mouth her mind finally made the connection between Harima's presence and the date of the day.

"Oh." She sucked in a breath, a little shakily. "Yes. Let's hear it."

She had forgotten Seiji.

Harima's eyes were bright with suspicion. She leaned back into the fake leather of her seat and talked without mentioning it, though.

There was a different kind of panic in Namie now. As Harima spoke she realized she hadn't though about Seiji more than in passing for days—or was it weeks? Had she gone so long forgetting the purpose of her presence here, of her _life_? Even now with a detailed description of her brother's activities at his workplace and with Harima herself she found that her hand was pressed on the outline of her phone against her thigh. She could slip it out of her jeans and open her inbox from there and see if the stranger had replied, see if Izaya had texted her, maybe even called. She closed her fingers into a fist and dug her nails into her palm hard enough that she couldn't ignore the pain anymore, and when she breathed again her whole body shook with it.

"He mostly hangs around the lab during the night," Harima said to her. She smiled politely when the same waiter came back with their drinks, and Namie sipped the red wine Harima had ordered for her. It was boring, but the heat of alcohol helped her focus. "He's not going in, though."

"Why not?" she replied, lifting her head to stare at the girl.

Harima's eyes glinted in the light of the fake-gold chandelier above them. "I don't know. He won't tell me."

_Maybe he's changed_ , Namie reflected blankly.

Harima hummed around the rim of her own glass. "I think he's changing," she said, echoing Namie's thoughts. "He doesn't really talk about the head so much anymore. He still goes to the lab at night and stands around the building for a while, but he never goes in. Not even into the lobby. He's stopped calling Shingen-san every day too."

Namie's mouth tasted bitter, and it wasn't because of the wine. "I see."

"That's it?" Harima asked. She leaned forward, and when Namie stared at the scars she had ordered Kishitani's son to put on her years ago the only thing she felt was a vague sort of regret. "Damn, I've been holding off telling you for months now, and this is how you react? Depressing."

"Anything to disappoint you," Namie replied dryly.

This made Harima smile again. "At least this doesn't change," she said, her voice surprisingly soft. "You'll hang on to this awful bitterness until the day you die. I've always liked that about you."

Namie felt her face heat in answer, something too close to embarrassment fluttering at her throat. "Harima," she said warningly.

"Don't worry," Harima replied. She toyed with the bright green stick in her glass that she hadn't taken out even after stirring the syrup together with the soda. Her face looked more serious than it had been before. "I know you hate me, Namie-san."

This wasn't the answer Namie wanted. Harima knew, because she always knew everything, and so it meant she was playing with Namie now—which Namie hated more than anything in the world.

She was still simmering when Harima spoke again. "I think he's trying to find himself."

"Seiji?"

"Yeah." She downed half of her glass in one go. Namie felt her own throat close up in disgust. She hated carbonated drinks. "He's starting to see me, you know?" she said, and her hand came into her short hair this time so that her head rested tilted on it. Her eyes never left Namie's. "Not just as a pale copy of the woman he loves, but me."

Namie looked for the horror and anguish this should have uprisen in her, but there was nothing.

Their food came not long after that. The waiter looked a little more stable on his feet and avoided both Harima's eyes and Namie's—he mumbled the names of the dishes he served and went back to take care of his other customers as fast as he could.

They ate in silence. The food wasn't bad, but she didn't think she would have felt any different about it had been atrocious; by now her hunger had turned to full-out nausea, and she made herself swallow her pasta without tasting any of it just so her hands would stop shaking. They did, a few minutes in. Harima dwarfed down her own plate with as much dignity as a dog. Though the sight was unpleasant Namie had known worse company during meals, so she didn't complain.

They skipped dessert in favor of coffee—tea and pastries for Harima, and even the tea was oversweet, two and a half sachets of sugar poured into it as soon as it was placed in front of her. She only drank it once it had become lukewarm. They paid at the counter before leaving, and Namie didn't leave a tip.

She expected Harima to stray from her as soon as they reached the apartment she shared with Seiji. But the girl followed in Namie's steps like some sort of baby animal, always one foot behind but her eyes burning a hole into the skin of Namie's nape. Namie ignored it as she did the ache of her feet inside her high heeled shoes. She only turned to face her again once she reached the entrance to her hotel's lobby.

"This is enough, I think," she declared flatly.

Harima smiled at her and curtsied jokingly. "Too bad," she replied.

And maybe Namie should have left it at that, but the discomfort from earlier was back now. "Stop this," she ordered.

"What do you mean?"

Namie gestured at her angrily. She couldn't look at the girl's face anymore. "Stop _flirting_ with me, Harima. You're a child."

Harima straightened her back. She didn't step closer, thankfully. Namie was still staring somewhere above the line of scars at her neck.

"I flirt with everyone," Harima said. But she didn't sound quite so sure of herself anymore.

"Not with me," Namie replied.

"I didn't think you cared about things like this, Namie-san," the girl said. Her lips curled at the corner. "You even kissed me, once."

Shame burned at the hollow of Namie's throat. It felt like she was bleeding from her heart out, and it left her lightheaded. Her eyesight was blurry now. She swallowed painfully, and she said, "I shouldn't have."

She turned her back on Harima and opened the door to the lobby. Harima said, "I don't think you're changing for the worse either," behind her, and Namie almost tripped on her own feet.

"Shut the fuck up," she said to no one. The door slammed shut behind her. She didn't look back.

Her room was just as messy as she had left it, except that she had forgotten to close her window, so now there were probably mosquitos around. She stood still at the entrance for a moment, looking blankly around the mess of dirty and clean clothes on her floor and the little wisps of dust that she could see peeking from under her bed even in the dark of mid-evening. She tugged her shoes off her feet and winced when the flat of her soles made contact with the floor.

It only took her a few minutes to drag all the clothes into the bin that she would take down to the basement's laundry room later. She vacuumed around the room once she was done, and maybe it was her imagination alone, but she felt like she was breathing a little easier.

Once she had done everything she could to delay what she had wanted to do all evening, she sat down at her desk and opened her laptop.

_Who gave you this address_ , she had written. And the stranger had replied, _Mairu and Kururi_.

She bit down on the side of her tongue until it ached.

Mairu and Kururi had very deliberately not had any contact with her since she had left. She thought she had an idea why, at the time. She thought she understood what it meant for them that Izaya had disappeared without a word—without even the assurance that he was alive, and with strict instructions not to tell his sisters that he was. He hadn't even tried to disguise it as worry on their behalf. He was just too cowardly to talk to them the way he was with calling her, or he didn't care enough. She tasted blood at the thought.

_You must have the wrong person_ , she wrote. And then she kicked her chair away from her desk and contemplated going for a second longer-than-necessary shower.

Her phone buzzed with the notification when they replied, less than a minute later. _I don't think so_ , they said. _But I apologize for inconveniencing you like this_.

The name _Mizuchi Yahiro_ revealed nothing when she tried to look for it in Izaya's old files. Part of her quivered at the sight of familiar names and data she had filed away herself over months of working for him; her own name taunted her when she scrolled down the list. Googling the name turned out to be just as useless.

Whoever this person was, Izaya hadn't known them while he was living in Tokyo. It was possible that they were doing this for someone else, though.

Scrolling back up in the list, she clicked on her own file.

It was long, as she had expected. Izaya had recorded her activities long before ever talking to her in person, long before that mess with the Ryuugamine kid and Nebula decided she was better off dead than alive. His notes went into excruciating detail; from her weight, height, common wardrobe choices— _boring_ , he had written, and she let out a laugh that made her belly _ache_ —to the places she ate at and her brother's own file and her imagined feelings about her family. From her shoe size to a stolen grocery receipt she had probably left around his apartment one day. It was as useless to him as anything else was, but he had put it there anyway. Probably to laugh at her.

"You fucking creep," she murmured. Air came out of her lungs a little more shakily than it was coming in. "Shit."

_My secretary_ was written at the very bottom of the page. Like an afterthought.

It wasn't, though.

Namie rested her elbows atop her desk and pressed onto her closed eyes with her fingers. When she opened them again there were blurry grey spots in her vision, and she blinked them off fiercely. Mizuchi's messages were still in her inbox, right above Izaya's.

She didn't think she could ever forget the call Izaya had given her before he left. _Don't tell Mairu and Kururi anything_ , he had ordered. And then: _Don't tell anything to anyone_. He hadn't contacted her for more than a month after that.

Her life in America wasn't any better or worse than it had been in Japan, she told herself. Maybe better because at least here she was free to come and go without the risk of someone coming after her to finish her off. She had her brother here, and she could keep watch on the Dullahan's head that had ruined her and her entire family.

Still there was a hole in her, something see-through that made everything look grey, everything taste like mud. She went through the motions of every day in a way she never did when she worked for Izaya, and maybe it was only that she was changing—growing older—like Harima had said, but she didn't think so.

She missed it. She missed the closeness, she missed the fights, she missed the unpredictability of those days. She missed walking into a home every morning and knowing that someone inside was expecting her.

_If he missed me_ , she thought—and the self-loathing had never felt realer than it did in this instant— _if he missed me, he would call_.

"Oh, fuck you," she said loudly. The annoying man in the room neighboring hers banged his fist on the wall twice.

She copied Izaya's email address into her reply to Mizuchi Yahiro before sending it, and for the first time in months the breath she took tasted like actual air.

If she was going to miss the worst person on earth she might as well make him pay for it. She had put up with his feeble attempts at keeping contact for twenty months, it was time he got a little desperate for her attention.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait. College has been murdering my writing time and therefore my self-esteem and overall mental health.
> 
> Chapter warnings: some violence, references to child abuse.

**Not Justice  
** **Chapter 2**

There were people disappearing.

Kuon felt a sort of crawling disgust every time he thought about how long it took him to notice. The fact that he did before Aoba was a poor consolation prize—and Aoba had called him the day before to talk about it, merely a day after Kuon himself had pieced it all together.

He knew Aoba was still stinging from the entire serial attacks thing, as well as Snake Hands in general. They hadn't talked much since that night at the warehouse and Yahiro's show of violence.

He mused over all of this as he made his way to Raira. It was the first day of class after summer break, and August had spread sweat over his back and an ache in his bones; by the time he reached the school's gates he was regretting having worn the uniform altogether.

Missing people in a city such as Tokyo were common. Almost all of them were traceable in reverse, though—via links to the underground or a history of unpaid debts, or petty crimes littered along their way until they ceased, stone-cold. There was always a way to find out a reason for their disappearance, if not their whereabouts. Those who weren't traceable were runaway kids of some sort or rare murder cases.

Not these people, though.

Kuon kept his eyes alert for Yahiro's slouch or Himeka's elegant stride as he leaned against the gates. He was too early by far. The grounds were almost deserted save for the janitor a little way ahead and two girls sitting on a bench by the entrance proper.

A school teacher in Shibuya. A cashier in Shinjuku. Three shopkeepers all over the city—and others, from pretty much every large district he could think of. Except Ikebukuro.

There was nothing about any of them. The news reported them, but nothing came out of it via official means, none via the information Aoba had been able to feed him, and none from IkeNews.

That was perhaps the most surprising thing of all: the fact that not a single person had had anything to comment on any of the articles Nozomi had written besides the usual internet garbage.

Kuon chewed on the inside of his cheek slowly; and then he yelled when someone hit him in the back and his teeth buried themselves into the soft flesh inside his mouth and spilled blood.

" _Fuck_ ," he exclaimed. When he spat out the excess saliva from the bite it came out pink. "What the fuck?"

"Language," said Mairu.

She stepped around him with a grin on her face. Kuon felt his heartbeat slow down significantly, though the air in his lungs still burned. "There was no need to _hit_ me."

"Just checking how pathetically out of shape you are, Kuon-kun," Mairu replied easily.

"As if I've been in shape a single day of my life."

She jumped and latched her hands at the edge of the brick wall surrounding the schoolyard before hoisting herself up to sit on it. Kuon ran his tongue over the mauled skin in his mouth and winced. It was the same cheek Yahiro had punched weeks ago, and it throbbed.

"Where's your sister?" he asked grudgingly.

"Out and about."

Mairu never looked like anything could bother her. Kuon watched her as she gently hit the back of her calves against the stone wall and leaned precariously backwards, until she should have fallen on the other side. She had way more strength in her than she looked to, though, and so she didn't.

"Ready for class?" she asked to the sky above. She sounded bored.

Kuon sighed. "Ready to feel my brain leak out of my ears, you mean."

She giggled, and sat up to look down at him again. "You sound like an old man."

"I'm not the one with porn mags in my backpack."

She winked. Kuon scowled.

Kururi joined them soon after, along with dozens of students from the newly arrived train. The courtyard ceased to look so empty after only a few minutes; people gathered around, and chatted more excitedly than they would until the next break came. Kuon felt a pang in his chest when he looked around again and didn't see either Yahiro or Himeka.

"Aoba's sick," Kururi mumbled at her sister, after throwing a quick glance Kuon's way that felt like a greeting. "Says he can't come today."

"Poor soul," Mairu replied. "Maybe we should pay him a visit after class, give him some proper caring for."

Kuon resisted the urge to snort audibly. He'd rather believe Aoba had grown a heart than think he would miss school for a cold. It was more probable that he was busy looking into the disappearances Kuon _should_ have noticed right as they started.

He stared at the ground and grit his teeth together slowly. His jaw ached.

"Kotonami," came a voice behind him.

He turned his head; Himeka was standing a few feet away, but even as he looked over the perfect make-up on her face and the line of her collar he found his own eyes being drawn to Yahiro by her side, looking as infuriatingly refreshed as he felt sleep-deprived. Yahiro nodded somberly. Kuon felt his heartbeat speed up, and nodded in return.

"How was your break?" Himeka asked.

"Painful," Kuon drawled, and though he hoped Yahiro would give some sort of a flinch in answer, the other boy didn't react at all.

"Aren't you cute," Mairu said above them, breaking the vague unease Kuon could feel permeating the air around them. "All of you, but Himeka-chan especially."

"Thank you," Himeka replied, bored.

"Are you really going to let yourself be seduced by the Kurumai unit this easily?" Kuon complained immediately, heart still in his throat. "And here I am, trying my best for nothing. I knew I should've worn a vest."

Kururi patted him on the head twice. "You'd look _terrible_ in a vest," Mairu translated.

"It's god to see you," Yahiro said then. Kuon looked back at him; but the boy was looking at Mairu and Kururi in turn, face pinched in discomfort and a crease between his eyebrows that never really left. He sounded sincere enough.

Mairu jumped down from the top of the wall. She spent a few seconds on theatrics, dusting the edge of her skirt and adjusting her glasses. Then she walked the few steps separating her from Yahiro and crushed him against her in a hug the way Kuon had only seen her do with Aoba.

She held him like this for longer than strictly necessary. From where he stood Kuon could only see half of Yahiro's face, and it looked nothing but awed and a little bit pained. He didn't move his arms to hold Mairu back, or say anything—in fact his mouth was open as if he had choked on every word he knew at once. When Mairu released him his eyes met Kuon's, and then shifted away as fast as they could, and Kuon felt apprehension unfurl inside him like pure ugliness.

He stayed silent. Mairu said something, too low for anyone but Yahiro to catch, and then she walked away. Kururi went after her and gave Yahiro a one-armed press of her body on the way. When she spoke this time Kuon heard: "Thank you."

He clenched his jaw again so that he wouldn't speak, or look like a fish out of water. Yahiro still wasn't looking at him.

"What was that about?" Himeka said. Bless her.

Yahiro shook his head once, firmly. "Nothing," he mumbled.

But he didn't look Kuon in the eyes.

Class itself felt comfortingly familiar. Kuon had never really had the experience of classmates in the meaning of people who knew him beyond name and general appearance; and if he were to be honest he knew part of the reason for his green hair was a call for attention. This had changed with Himeka, with _Yahiro_ , transformed his days of solid nothingness and part-time delinquency into part-time delinquency and part-time fun. He didn't like being honest, though.

When lunch came around he felt jittery, his phone burning along his thigh a little more with every notification buzz he received either from Nozomi's website or his own bookmarked searches. He took a detour by the bathroom to read up on what he had missed before joining Himeka and Yahiro for lunch.

 _Is there_ anything _to link them?_ he texted Nozomi as quickly as he could. _Anything at all?_

He waited for a few minutes. Nozomi didn't answer.

Eventually he heard the flow of students from the hallways dribble down into the occasional hurried footsteps of a latecomer. About twenty minutes had gone by since he hid in the bathroom stall, and if he didn't leave it now not only would Yahiro and Himeka worry, but he wouldn't have time to eat lunch at all.

"God damn," he muttered. But he did leave the stall, and though one boy that he hadn't heard come in looked at him with empty eyes Kuon didn't bother faking to wash his hands.

Yahiro watched him come from a very long way around the tennis courts. Not many people went as far as they did for lunch. They all preferred it that way, Kuon thought a little darkly. He tried to get a read of Yahiro again once he was within reasonable distance of the other boy, but Yahiro looked away.

"Anything interesting?" he asked. He was trying his best to hide the annoyance in his voice but he didn't think he was successful, judging by the way Himeka stared at him. "Did you make any advances on Himeka-chan, Yahiro?"

"I didn't," Yahiro replied, at the same time as Himeka said, "You two aren't so formal anymore now."

This seemed to make them both pause at the same time. For the first time that day Yahiro met Kuon's eyes, and Kuon could read the same panic in them as he did at any given moment. Yahiro didn't say anything to confirm or deny it, though, and so Kuon stayed silent as well. He ignored the warmth tingling in his fingertips as he sat down on the dry grass.

His phone buzzed before he managed to completely finish his sandwich. He shot a look at his classmates before taking it out of his pocket to read Nozomi's text, which just said, _Yeah_.

He waited for a minute. Nozomi didn't seem like she was going to stop being cryptic, so he shot her a quick message demanding that she explain herself. _You're not going to like it_ , she replied almost immediately.

"Kuon?"

Kuon lifted his eyes to look at Yahiro. The boy was staring at the phone in his hands, but from his position he couldn't have read anything on its screen, so Kuon didn't make a move to hide it. Better not give that person any reason to suspect anything.

"What is it?" he replied after a while.

Yahiro chewed softly onto the inside of his cheek. He still refused to look up. "I was wondering if we could talk."

Kuon's blood felt cold. He glanced at Himeka, but the girl was finishing her lunch with the kind of application one reserved for painting a masterpiece. She didn't make any move or sound to show what she felt about them leaving her or that she had heard them talk at all. "Sure," Kuon said, and even as he stood up he felt the breath shiver out of him.

He had woken up that day with wrongness in his head and in the taste in his mouth. And now Aoba was sick, Nozomi was acting weird, and Yahiro wanted to talk.

They walked only a short way from their spot in the grass. No one was practicing on any of the fields or courts at this hour, so close to the end of lunch; the few students who came this way to eat at all had already packed and gone, not even leaving the evidence of plastic wrappings behind them to show. Yahiro walked behind what little plant coverage there was at the edge of the sports area and beckoned Kuon to follow, which he did with tension in his gut and his back.

For a moment Yahiro did nothing but look at him—at his face, but not his eyes. And Kuon realized what he wanted.

He lifted a hand to his cheek. "I'm fine," he called, a little aggressively perhaps.

"I'm glad," Yahiro nodded. "And your teeth?"

"Went to see a doctor the morning after. I'm fine. I'm tougher than that."

"I know you are."

Kuon tensed. He felt the outline of his phone in his pocket and thought, not for the first time, of calling Nozomi about this. Of letting her know how much he despised her for saying anything to Yahiro of all people, and letting her feel a breath of the injustice this was to him. But it was her story, too. She had a right to tell it. She had a right to say what she wanted, and Kuon should be glad that she had, even if not to him.

It still stung. He was the one person who could understand, and she had betrayed them both.

"If that's all," he said coldly. He started to turn around on his feet, but there was a hand at his elbow before he could shift the whole way, and Yahiro was in his face, quick as lightning. Kuon felt the flinch take over him and bit down on his tongue until the pain kept him still. His entire mouth tasted like blood.

Yahiro released him. "I'm sorry," he said, pathetically earnest.

"Don't be," Kuon replied with a joyless smile. "This is what I want you around for, after all."

He had meant it to hurt, but Yahiro's face didn't betray anything. Kuon wasn't sure if he wanted to burn on the spot or make everything around them burn.

Yahiro hesitated visibly; then he raised a hand again, and put it on Kuon's shoulder. "I just need to know something," he said.

Kuon hunched his back. For a second he missed the practicality of his middle-school haircut and of the ugly fringe it offered. He would have loved to hide behind his hair. "Just shoot, Yahiro."

"If," Yahiro started. He looked troubled. "If I did something wildly out of your expectations, what would you do?"

"You mean if you betrayed me," Kuon said. His heart was beating too fast again, and disappointment tore open something in his gut that he hadn't even know was there.

"Is it betrayal if I'm doing it for you?"

Kuon stepped back, and Yahiro's hand fell from his shoulder limply. "I don't need you to do things _for_ me. I just need you to do things the way I want you to do them."

"Fine," Yahiro said. "Then I'll just do it for myself." He nodded, then, as if to seal some contract with himself, and Kuon didn't think he had seen anymore more ominous in his life.

His phone buzzed loudly. Yahiro looked down to his pocket, where Kuon had kept his hand the entire time. It was slippery now, and his fingers slid against the plastic case wetly. His entire body felt hot, from the weather and from his own discomfort. He was sure his face was red too.

The school's bell tore into the silence. "We should go back," Yahiro said. "Himeka is probably gone already."

"Probably, yeah."

He didn't want to go just yet. He wanted to ask what Yahiro had meant, and he wanted to look at Nozomi's texts and try to find out what she was hiding from him too—and mostly he wanted to go back to the stall in the boy's bathroom and breathe heavily into the emptiness there until he didn't feel like the earth was about to crack open under his feet and swallow him whole.

Himeka was gone indeed. The entire sports area was empty of everyone but the angry-looking baseball coach, who yelled at them to hurry back to class when he spotted them. Yahiro ran ahead, and Kuon followed best as he could, his breath hitching in his throat and his heart beating wildly against his ribcage. By the time they made it back to their classroom everyone else was already seated and waiting for the math teacher to arrive.

He should probably have waited until after class to check his messages. Maybe even until he was home so he could ask Nozomi directly, because he was sure that whatever she had sent was full of riddles and mockery; but Kuon took his phone out anyway and wiped his damp palms against his jeans.

 _A lot of them are former clients of Izaya-san_ , Nozomi had written. _And if they aren't, at least they look like they could be_.

And, well. This sort of information, associated with this name, was something Kuon should have expected out of a day such as this.

 

* * *

 

Shizuo had taken to meeting Celty once a week, on Thursdays, when his shift at the agency ended earliest. It hadn't been a conscious decision on their part, or at least on his. He had wanted to see her as soon as she came back from her trip and she had displayed the same enthusiasm—and though they had texted at least once a week while she was gone the memory of her excitement when she saw him again warmed his heart in a way nothing had for a long time.

After that they had just kept meeting on the same day, at the same hour, at the same place. Ikebukuro West Gate Park was popular enough that no one paid them much attention, and if they did they were from the wrong crowd. Not the types of people to make the association that the black-clad rider was the Black Rider or that the man beside her was just as infamous as she was. Shizuo tried to come wearing less recognizable clothes all the same.

Today was warm and dry, more September than August. They were a little closer to the main road than usual, near the cover of trees whose shadows they didn't really need. Celty didn't feel heat or cold anyway.

She looked tired, he thought. She tended to hunch on herself the same way Shinra did when she was, and her bike held most of her weight for her. She was sitting on it, almost.

 _It's just been a rough few weeks_ , she said when he asked. Part of him wanted to press for more, and another remembered the videos he had seen of the screaming shadow-person and moonlit building and the violence that had taken place there.

She had told him she was there when it happened. He knew she wasn't the one who had done it; he just didn't know why she would feel so reluctant to tell him who had. As far as he knew the people there had been part of a conspiracy against her, he wasn't going to run after the person who got rid of them.

 _How's Kasuka-kun?_ she wrote. Her fingers were shaking a little, but he took the bait anyway.

"Good. He's been doing more and more big productions lately."

 _That's awesome_.

Shizuo smiled at her. "He said he's been called to audition for a foreign movie. If he gets the part it might kickstart his career in America, I think? I don't understand much about this stuff."

Celty typed lazily against her phone. Her helmet was dangling a little low on her neck, he noticed warily. _Will you be sad, if he goes?_

He wanted to smoke, but he clenched his fist instead. He was trying to stop. "Dunno," he said, looking up at the canopy of the tree above them glowing gold in the sunlight. "I guess I will. It's not like he can't come back or call."

She patted him on the shoulder. When he looked down again she was saying, _I hope Ruri-chan gets to go with him_.

"She might. I think she said she wanted to go back to working behind the cameras."

 _It'd be a shame if she stopped singing, though_.

He didn't think Ruri felt the same way, if Kasuka's infrequent updates about her were to be believed. "I don't like her music anyway," he decided.

He watched Celty write agitatedly beside him and felt a bit relieved. It seemed she really was just tired, and nothing more. She must have noticed, because she said, _Sorry. I think the distance with my head is affecting me_.

"What do you mean?" He frowned.

 _I've been sleeping more since it's been gone_ , she replied. _And I feel more… emotional, maybe, would be the right word. As if my body is getting more human. Or human-like_.

"That's weird."

 _I don't know. I can't remember how I felt before I came to Japan. I just know that while we were both here at the same time I hardly needed any rest. Now I feel like I'm running out of energy sometimes_. She stopped; typed again, then erased, then again. When she finally turned her phone back toward him it said: _I don't dislike it_.

She wouldn't. For as long as he had known her she had longed for humanity and its displeasures, even as others envied her for the perks her body gave her. But Shizuo knew what strength and near-immortality felt like.

He didn't like thinking about mortality very much. Or strength.

Tom was still in the hospital for his head injury. The Slugger—or the one Shizuo had beaten down for attacking his colleague at least—had been a mystery now for weeks, unheard of and unseen. It was like they had just disappeared.

"Feels weird, doesn't it?" he asked softly. Celty turned her helmet to him. "The city, I mean. It hasn't felt this weird since…" He stopped, because he didn't know how to finish his sentence.

 _I know what you mean_ , Celty offered. Then, tactfully: _It's a bit like when Izaya was around, isn't it?_

Shizuo's mouth was dry. "Yeah."

He kept peering into alleyways or watching every corner of every room he found himself in, and expecting to see black clothes and black hair and quick blades. But Izaya only ever showed up in his dreams; and when he did, he wasn't so quick, and his black clothes were stained with blood.

Leaning against the tree behind him and patting the untouched pack of cigarettes in his pocket, Shizuo thought life hadn't been so bad. The chaos was familiar and comforting, somehow. Maybe that was the reason Celty didn't want to explain what was happening. Maybe she was trying to hang on to the solid evidence of the unusual before it vanished again. If he closed his eyes and let the sounds of the city run over him, felt the glow of sunlight through the leaves overhead, and knew Celty was standing beside him in silence… he could consider himself happy.

Celty broke him out of his reverie a few minutes later. He felt her jump because her arm hit his in the process, with almost enough strength to make him topple sideways. He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but she wasn't looking at him—she was staring at the sidewalk opposite theirs where a boy stood. He was staring at Shizuo.

If Shizuo hadn't felt the strength of those eyes before with violence singing through him, he wouldn't have recognized him.

The boy looked both ways carefully before crossing the street to join them. He was wearing Raira's uniform, exactly like he had when they had seen each other last. Despite himself Shizuo felt his fists clench in preparation for a fight and his mended shoulder ache in memory. Guilt gripped him tight in the stomach.

"Good afternoon," the boy said. His voice was soft but not hesitant.

Shizuo was surprised to see Celty fumble with her phone to answer and the boy not lift an eyebrow at the sight. In fact—and he blinked slowly as he realized it—the boy didn't look at all surprised to see them here. Either of them.

He couldn't catch what she wrote to the kid, but he saw him smile very briefly in answer. "I'm well. I'm sorry to bother you, I just…" His eyes met Shizuo's then, something pained in them making him look younger than he probably was. "Heiwajima-san," he said. "I'm sorry to intrude on you like this."

He could feel Celty look between the both of them with someone akin to awe. "S'fine," Shizuo mumbled. His heartbeat felt off. If he had been smoking he thought he would have crushed the cigarette between his teeth, not out of anger, but out of embarrassment.

He hadn't planned on seeing the boy again so soon. Or ever.

Before he could voice this—or apologize—the boy spoke again: "I wanted to apologize for last time."

"What?" said Shizuo.

"I'm sorry," and the kid bowed deeply, his back straight as a ruler, "for attacking you, and for hurting you. Kuon—my friend—he apologizes as well, for those horrible things he said."

"I'll believe that when I'm dead," Shizuo replied automatically. The boy flinched a little, head still turned to the ground, and Shizuo felt his face grow warm—"Sorry. I should be the one apologizing."

The boy looked up, dumbfounded. "Why? You did nothing wrong."

He had done plenty wrong. Attacking a teenager at all, just because he had felt so unsettled at his words and his smile and the rush of _Izaya_ in his mind like never since that day and that phone call. And that was without the full-on battle that had followed and without the realization, very soon after, that the boy now bowing in front of him had only acted out of worry.

Shizuo bowed, too, awkwardly. "I shouldn't have attacked you. Either of you."

He wasn't familiar with politeness. He straightened his back again, too soon, too slowly, and the boy—he didn't even know his name—was staring at him in wonder.

Celty broke him out of his thoughts with a firm hand at his elbow. In her fingers she held her phone, turned outward so that they could both see the words on it, and still it took Shizuo a few seconds to blink the dregs of the fire out of his eyes and read them. _You know Yahiro-kun?_

"Yeah," he said. His own voice sounded distant to him. "Sort of."

His words seemed to trouble her greatly. _How?_

He couldn't answer her. Yahiro took the burden away from him by saying, "There was a misunderstanding. We attacked each other."

 _You fool_ , Celty typed angrily. _Did no one tell you how dangerous fighting with Shizuo is?_

"I know," Yahiro replied, cheeks flushing to red under her attention. "I, uh. I realized that pretty quickly."

Shizuo felt nausea creep up his throat slowly. His chest ached, and his hands felt weak.

 _I guess—_ Celty wrote. She paused for a second before writing the rest of her thoughts. _I guess this place has a knack for attracting people out of the ordinary_.

But Ikebukuro hadn't attracted anyone weird enough to be noticed by Shizuo. Not for a year and a half.

Silence fell on them for a while after that. Despite the warmth of late summer Shizuo felt coldness in him, enough so that goosebumps were running up his neck and making the hair at his nape stand up uncomfortably. The boy, Yahiro, was looking at the ground rather than either of them. With flecks of sunlight pouring onto him through the tree's leaves his hair looked more brown than black, Shizuo realized.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said suddenly. He looked back at Shizuo with a child's determination in his eyes—and a glint of something less kind. "But I'm not sure anymore."

Shizuo felt his shoulder throb in answer, as if in remembrance of the powerful tug that had dislocated it weeks prior—or even further back in the midst of fire and with oxygen running low, when he punched a hole into the ground beneath him so that he wouldn't burn to death.

"I think I got it wrong," he said.

Yahiro's head tilted to the side, the picture of innocent confusion. The sight was jarring. "What do you mean?"

"I thought your friend, the one with green hair, reminded me of this guy the most." Shizuo dragged the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and broke the seal mindlessly; one stick fell between his fingers, the paper creasing with a soft sound. "But I think you've got some Izaya in you."

The smoke hurt in a comforting way. If he breathed in and focused on the smell and taste alone he could forget the memory of the fire and the feeling of gasping uselessly for a breath—could forget the outline of Izaya's body standing above him, cut against the night sky like some skinny bird of prey, looking down on him as he died.

Shizuo breathed out slowly. "Get out of my sight," he said, low in his throat, and though he wasn't looking he knew Yahiro's face wasn't giving in. Not to fear, and not to his order.

He really needed to stop smoking.

 

* * *

 

Sozoro had woken Izaya every day at seven o'clock sharp since he had started working for him. Out of spite and no small amount of what he'd taken to call _self-pitying_ Izaya had set an alarm for six, which left him with one ample hour to doze in and out of dreams and contemplate the day to come. On good days he simply slept. On bad days, he thought.

Today wasn't a bad day, but it wasn't a good one either. He found that a great majority of his days tended to be the same uninteresting shade of not-painful-enough-to-warrant-misery; it was infuriating, because Sozoro loved being lenient about as much as he loved Izaya, and because the edge between bad and worse left no time for relief.

His back ached, and his mood suffered.

"Good morning," Sozoro said brightly when he came into the room. He made a beeline for the window and opened the blinds before Izaya could rip a word out of the dryness of his mouth, and sunlight poured into the room, blinding him. He swore under his breath.

"Can you at _least_ give me a minute?" he protested weakly.

"It's a beautiful day," Sozoro continued in the same voice. Izaya might as well have not talked at all. "You have a client coming in an hour."

"I know." He sighed, and rubbed the wetness out of his eyes.

Sozoro helped him into the shower and out, made his breakfast to perfection, and brought him his laptop right as he finished eating. For all that he complained about the man himself Izaya knew he would be hard-pressed to find someone more useful.

Knowing that Sozoro planned to kill him kept things interesting as well.

It truly was a beautiful day. The sun was high and the city gleamed through the open windows, the wind cold enough from the top of the building that air conditioning didn't seem necessary at the moment. Sometimes the harsh glint of the sunlight, reflected off some window, caught at Izaya's eyes like a tiny needle, making him blink in and out of focus.

He finished his coffee like this, chair by the window and laptop on his knees. He waited patiently as it turned on and strained his neck to look as far down as he could in the hope of catching the city's movement in the streets, people walking and cars running and maybe even children on their way to school. That would have necessitated standing up, though. These windows weren't wall-size.

Namie hadn't replied to him yet. Izaya eyed the New Message button and considered pressing for news; but Namie had been answering less and less as the months went by, and with fewer and fewer words. The thought stung almost as much as that of looking desperate, so he left her alone for the day and started working on clearing his inbox.

By the time he was done with the usual clients and other work-associated messages there was only one unread left. The kanji were unfamiliar and the address itself made them out into a strange name. The subject was blank.

The content, however, was not.

Izaya felt his hands start to shake before he finished reading the first sentence. He dropped his coffee onto the table next to window, spilling some of it against the potted plant sitting there and the remote controller for the television hung on the opposite wall. His voice was tight when he called, "Sozoro," and maybe too soft. But Sozoro had the ears of an assassin and the eyes of one too, and he was here a few seconds later, his hand closed tight around a case Izaya knew was full of pills.

"I don't need those," he said through gritted teeth. Sozoro gave a pointed look to his hands, but Izaya waved them in front of him as if this was enough to shake off their weakness. "Just bring me my phone."

"Of course, Izaya."

The device was in his lap a moment later. Izaya typed in the number from memory and hit call before he realized that he should probably have waited for a more appropriate time—and that the call was going to cost him a fortune.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: somewhat graphic descriptions of anxiety/panic and other symptoms of PTSD.

**Not Justice**

**Chapter 3**

The phone rang for a long time in Izaya's ear. Like an extension of the buzz in his head, the flat note in the receiver felt like a headache made into sound. His temple was starting to throb but his eyes never left the screen of his laptop. The light was already dimming as it settled into sleep mode; he managed to read Mizuchi Yahiro's words again before they left.

_I have a few questions to ask you_.

Then Namie picked up. And Izaya wasn't as ready as he had thought, because the mere sound of her strained breathing was enough to make bile rise up to his throat and linger, bitter, painful.

_"Yes,"_ she said.

He couldn't answer.

It wasn't that his mouth couldn't open or that his tongue was dry. He made no move to reach for the glass of fresh water that Sozoro had helpfully set atop the windowsill. It glinted in the sunlight, getting warmer by the second no doubt—and Izaya looked at the rest of the room to his right and met the old butler's clever eyes, and for the first time since he had met him, he felt apprehension.

"Leave," he said curtly. He only realized his mistake when he heard Namie breathe in harshly in his ear—he had forgotten to mask his voice from her.

"I don't think I will," Sozoro said pleasantly.

Izaya clenched his teeth and pulled the phone away from his ear. "If you don't leave—"

He stopped, because he could hear Namie's voice talking loudly but unintelligibly, and he put the phone back to his head by reflex.

_"I swear to God if this is is an accidental call—"_

"It's not," he growled before he could stop himself, and she fell silent immediately, with another gasp. "Give me a second, God damn it."

But he didn't turn back to Sozoro after that. He listened to the sound of her breathing and gripped the arm of his chair until his knuckles turned bone-white. His breath was caught in a vice and he knew that once he released it it wouldn't come out without a whistle or a wheeze.

Namie would hear it.

Izaya pressed the screen of his phone against his knee and exhaled loudly, hoping that by some miracle he hadn't hung up on her. He didn't think Namie would take a second call if he had.

"All right," he said, placing the phone back against his ear. "We can talk now."

_"You took your sweet fucking time,"_ she replied angrily.

And if it had been two years ago he would've laughed at her. If it had been two years ago he would've felt empowered by her lack of composure, but he wasn't two years ago, and he was still reeling from how precisely he could _hear_ her in spite of the disembodied coldness of static and distance.

He hadn't realized how starved he was for that.

"I'm—"

He stopped.

Namie waited for a moment. Then she barked, _"What?"_

"Nothing."

_"Izaya,"_ and that was something else again, the sound of her calling his name like this. He hadn't been able to recall it to perfection. _"Did you call me after all this time for_ nothing _?"_

"No." He blinked. "I called you because…"

He couldn't remember. For a while he blinked at the laptop on his knees without knowing why it was there or what he was supposed to do with it. His breath was coming fast and shallow, and from the corner of his vision he saw the way Sozoro hovered, the way his hand toyed with the opening of the pill case where the anxiolytics and antiemetics were. Izaya sucked in a breath and powered his laptop up again.

"You gave someone my contact information," he said. Mizuchi Yahiro. That was why he had called. "You gave my info to someone from Ikebukuro."

Namie didn't answer. He could still hear her breathe, and she sounded pacified now. Somehow the thought was enough drag anger out from the floating remnants of his focus.

"I told you not to talk to anyone about me, especially from Ikebukuro," he finished, and he knew he sounded cold.

_"Well, I did,"_ she said. Unbothered.

Izaya drummed on the arm of his chair with the pads of his fingers. It was better than clenching them into a fist. "Who are they?"

_"No idea."_

"What?"

_"I have no idea who this guy is,"_ she continued with satisfaction on her voice thick as syrup. _"He emailed me yesterday. Got my address from your sisters, apparently."_

Izaya didn't say anything in answer. He read over Mizuchi's message again and tried to forget what Namie had just said even though his mind wanted nothing more than to settle on her voice and grab. It was hard to pinpoint anything specific out of the ridiculously polite message except maybe for age. Mizuchi did sound like someone who could be his sisters' age.

_"Aren't you going to ask me why I did it?"_ Namie said.

Izaya finally noticed the lack of noise in the background, as if she had locked herself inside somewhere.

"Didn't you do it just to keep your spot as the number one pain in my ass?"

_"I thought that spot belonged to Heiwajima Shizuo."_

And Izaya was in the process of chewing on his lip but he bit through the flesh instead and tasted warmth and iron on his tongue. He swallowed.

"Shizuo doesn't belong in this conversation," he said tightly.

_"Doesn't he?"_

"Do you plan on being my shrink now that you're not my secretary, Namie-san?" Izaya spat out. "Wanna hear all about the disgusting little symptoms?"

_"You're being ridiculous—"_

"Ah," he cut in. He sat back into his chair and rolled away from the window, pushing on the floor with his toes, biting his lips through the crawling pain from his ankles to his shoulders and the frozen air in his lungs—"So did you miss me, then?"

It was her turn to breathe as if she was spitting blood. For a while he listened to the sound of her anger and felt his own grow in kind, felt as if she was breathing rage right into his skin and into the warm blood in his veins. It traveled through his body and nestled in his belly, hot and inviting.

_"You call me,"_ she started, voice trembling with it, _"after almost_ two years _. You call me after months of treating me like I'm nothing more than a string of letters on a goddamn computer screen—and all you have to say is_ insults _—"_

"Is that the sound of you _caring_?"

_"You shut the fuck up, you creep!"_ she yelled.

Izaya closed his mouth, and through the distance he knew she had heard the sound of his teeth knocking together.

_"I don't give a crap anymore."_ Her voice had the same quality it did in those last few days before he left—when she was drunk from lack of sleep and split apart between mania and rage. _"You're the stupidest person I've ever met in my life and you don't deserve any consideration. From me, or from anyone."_

Izaya tried to grab the lukewarm glass on the windowsill; but all he did was push it over the edge and fall wetly onto the carpet. Sozoro walked up to the stain immediately, cloth materializing in his hands.

"So you're betraying me," Izaya said. "Again."

_"Yeah,"_ Namie replied shakily. _"I am."_

"What's your goal, then?" His heart was beating in his throat, and his chest had started aching, his head brimming with pain and nausea running up into his mouth. "What are you trying to achieve? Do you think a kid can do anything to me?"

Namie didn't answer. Izaya took the pills Sozoro gave him wordlessly and swallowed them dry, but he pushed the man's hand away when it tried to take hold of the brake of the wheelchair. He didn't want to lie down even if it would make the attack more bearable. He breathed tightly against the pressure and tried to ignore the taste of bile at the back of his tongue. He hadn't eaten anything worth vomiting.

"Namie," he said.

She took a while to answer. _"Yeah."_

"I don't get you."

It made her chuckle joylessly. _"Fuck you."_

Izaya pressed between his eyebrows with the tips of his fingers. The headache didn't abate at all, but he hadn't expected it to. "Who is Mizuchi Yahiro?"

_"A friend of your sisters',"_ she replied automatically, and it felt nicer than anything else had to think that she wasn't rid of this habit yet. As if she was still hunched over her desk on the other side of his Shinjuku apartment. _"He says he wants to talk to you about Ikebukuro."_

"He says he wants to talk to me about Konotami Kuon," Izaya said. He had to strain to associate a face to the name, and when he did it wasn't Kuon's but his sister Nozomi's that he remembered.

_"I don't know who that is."_

"You wouldn't," he muttered.

Izaya had never told Namie about those girls. Nozomi, and Saki, and the others. She had to know anyway—she had probably dug into his files when Saki made her move years ago and learned all she could about his 'fanclub'. But Izaya had never been the one to tell her, and she had never mentioned it to him outright.

He had never managed to understand why he had shielded her from them. Why he had thought of Namie's history written stark in her body and her temper and felt the need to keep her away from those girls, away from the truth of what he'd done to them.

It felt a lot like shame, as much as he wanted to deny it.

_"Something's happening back there,"_ Namie said.

Izaya closed his eyes. Kanto smelled clearer and nicer than the big city ever did, and every breath felt cleansing and remarkable this high above street level. He thought about smoke and fire and the pain in his chest grew, clawing at his lungs.

"I'm not going back," he answered. He made a fist of his free hand and banged it softly below his throat, between his collarbones. The burning sensation flared but didn't back down. "Ikebukuro has lost all interest to me."

She snorted. _"You mean Ikebukuro's lost interest in you."_

"Either way," he declared between his teeth, "there's nothing for me to gain by going back." He ignored the mocking hum coming out of Sozoro's throat. "No secrets left for me to play with."

_"Now you're just fooling yourself."_

"None that I'm _interested in_ ," he continued, cutting her. "We've had this conversation."

She stayed silent for a moment. And then she said, _"No, we haven't."_

"Namie—"

_"We've never had this conversation because you've avoided conversation with me for twenty fucking months,"_ she continued hotly. _"You don't want to come back there and face the consequences of what you did to yourself, fine. I get it. But don't lie to me."_

"Izaya," Sozoro said, soft and uncaring.

Izaya must look terrible. His head felt dizzy and his face cold, but his hands were sweating and the ache in his chest wasn't gone despite the drugs, and now his belly was shaking, or spasming softly, with every beat of his heart. He swallowed. "You don't know anything."

_"Don't I?"_ Namie replied. _"Can you honestly tell me that you're feeling peachy right this second?"_

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "Don't act like you care."

He heard her take a breath and hoped for a wild second that she would deny him, that she would say, _But I do care_. But all Namie did was shake over her own end of the line and breathe, and though the sound of it was loud in his ear, it meant nothing at all. She was breathing, thousands and thousands of miles away. That was all.

"I am _peachy_ ," Izaya said. "And I'm not going back to Tokyo."

Namie didn't say anything.

Izaya grabbed the controls of his chair with a trembling hand and wheeled himself away from the window. Sozoro watched him like a hawk from his rigid stance near the opening of the kitchen. Izaya felt the man's amusement on the back of his neck when he strained to reach the coffee machine and cups.

And then, though he knew he shouldn't, he said, "I'm not the one who moved an entire continent away from home."

She exhaled harshly. He heard the sound of something rustling—sheets on a bed, maybe, it was late in the night on her side of the world—and then a chair scraping against wooden floor and the unmistakable tone of a computer booting up. There was a loud noise, as if she had dropped her phone on a table or a desk, and she started typing.

The silence stretched for more than a minute. Izaya's coffee was done. He was drinking it with distaste but in hope of his headache abating somewhat.

Finally, she grabbed her phone again. _"Are you still here?"_

"Yes," he said immediately.

She hesitated for a second.

_"In the last few months, and from what I could glean over the quickest search, at least three inexplicable events took place in Ikebukuro."_

Izaya pressed his fingers tighter around the cup of coffee, until the ceramic burned against his skin and turned it red.

_"People disappeared en masse and then came back,"_ Namie continued without waiting for him to speak. _"Then there were assaults—a guy dressed like an owl, like a character from some stupid movie, started hitting people across the head with a hammer. But the attacks stopped a couple weeks ago with no explanation. There's speculation that it was actually several people. Apparently one of them was sent flying by Heiwajima Shizuo."_

"I'm not interested," Izaya said.

_"But you don't even know the best yet,"_ Namie replied coldly.

She typed again, louder and faster. She must've put him on speaker, for him to hear her move so clearly.

_"Every website is talking about a new monster,"_ she said. _"Calling it Snake Hands, a new urban legend, comparing it to the the Black Rider. Some say it's her sibling or her_ boyfriend _."_

And Izaya couldn't help the soft laugh that came out at this, no matter how painful it felt coming out. He bit his lips immediately after. "We both know that spot's taken. Probably a hoax."

_"There's a video."_ She must have opened it, because he heard unintelligible static and something like the murmur of a group of people that must have been shouts in reality. _"It's blurry but there's—"_ And then Izaya almost threw away his phone because someone— _something_ —was screaming an ice-cold, broken kind of wail, and his heart jumped in his chest and his back hunched over as if he had been punched in the plexus.

His phone fell out of his fingers and onto his lap, almost slid down from his legs and clattered onto the floor. Sozoro caught it with a flick of his hand and a sneer.

Izaya breathed in short gasps through the iciness in his bones. His arms were shaking.

"I'm going to hang up now," Sozoro said dispassionately. It took Izaya a second more to notice that he was speaking to Namie.

"No," he replied. His own voice sounded very away from himself. "Give me the phone."

Sozoro looked like he wanted to argue; but either he disliked Izaya enough to want to see him fall into full-blown panic or he just didn't care, because he gave the device back, and Izaya almost let it fall again through his damp fingers. He breathed in deeply and clenched all the muscles in his arm and his hand until he was sure of his grip.

"My apologies," he said when he stuck the phone back against his ear.

_"You all right?"_ Namie asked.

His mouth was dry. He made himself swallow and exhale before saying, "I just got surprised."

Two years ago she would've laughed at him. He didn't know if he liked her silence any better.

Izaya cleared his throat. "So what was that?"

_"Right,"_ she said. And then again, in a firmer voie, _"Right."_ She didn't comment on him showing curiosity and simply moved again, the sound clear against his ear like no international call should be. _"It's blurry. But it looks human. It's going around beating every single person there into a pulp."_

"What does it look like?" Izaya asked, because it was better than lingering on how cold he felt.

_"Look for yourself. I just sent you the video."_

He had a new message in his inbox and his phone buzzed loudly against the side of his face.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Sozoro called from his side of the room, and in Izaya's ear, Namie bristled.

_"Is that your new assistant? Because I didn't think you'd settle for such incompetence—"_

"Sozoro is every bit the gentleman," Izaya replied, and the smile curling the corner of his lips was genuine this time. "Everything he does he does with perfection in mind. I've never had such brilliant service in my life."

She was silent, but for the first time in months it wasn't hard to summon her face in his mind and how her lips thinned and whitened when she was disappointed. Izaya laughed.

"Oh, don't be so angry. He's only indulging me until he has a good enough chance to kill me and get away with it."

"I despise him," Sozoro confirmed. "But I like it better when he can move around by himself and I don't have to carry him around because he was foolish enough to put himself into shock."

"I'll be fine," Izaya said. He turned off the sound of his laptop and opened the video, and if the lowest of his back was slick with cold sweat he was the only one to notice or care.

The monster on the screen was but a black blur in the distance, surrounded by the same shadows that Celty always had. But Celty was nowhere to be seen. The thing screamed its awful scream atop an old rundown building and jumped straight from the roof, and then, the camera started shaking.

It wasn't enough that Izaya couldn't see details. The thing had a head, and a human-shaped body, but all of it was black, as if it was sucking out every light—it was the way Celty's body looked at night in the city, the way the Coiste Bodhar looked when you'd expect it to gleam. This monster was like this all over. It flew from one person to the next and took each down with ruthless strikes—violently enough that Izaya saw blood fly into the air and heard bones snap cleanly; and then it stood in front of whoever was holding the camera and looked straight at it with wide, cold eyes. The entire thing only lasted forty seconds.

It wasn't anything like Shizuo. It aimed to kill and cut and take down where Shizuo only ever cared to punch and throw. Izaya watched it again twice, and when he paused onto the beast's eyes again he thought he saw fear in them rather than rage.

He exhaled slowly. There was a phantom ache in his arms, not enough to hurt, but just enough to remind him of the possibility of pain.

Izaya held his phone up once more. "What is this?"

_"I have no idea,"_ Namie replied.

"Oh, come on," he said. He rubbed his forehead. "You have more contact with Ikebukuro than I do."

_"Do you really think your sisters kept talking to me after you left?"_

"Why wouldn't they?"

_"How can you be this stupid?"_ Namie spat at him. If he'd been with her physically, he had no doubt that she really would have spat in his face. _"You know the only reason they ever bothered with me was because of you."_

He chuckled hollowly. "They don't care about me. Which is good, because I don't care about them either."

_"Right,"_ Namie said with disgust on her voice. _"Keep telling yourself that."_

Her ignored her tone and her words. "Well. While this is amusing, I still have no intention of doing anything about it."

_"You're not curious at all."_

"Curiosity is one thing," he answered truthfully. "Interest is another."

There was nothing waiting for him in Ikebukuro. Kine would've contacted him if anything arose that would put Izaya at risk, and Izaya hadn't heard of Kine since the man took him to a disgusting back-alley clinic outside of Tokyo and held him down as the surgeon ripped Varona's knife out of his ribs. That had paid the last of Kine's debt to him. The man had made himself scarce since then, and even Manami had only stuck around long enough to make sure that Izaya would live.

Haruna was back with her father. Saki carefully kept herself out of caring distance, with Masaomi's help. Shiki would have found proof of what he did to Akane a long time ago and put an end to any personal inclination he felt toward him as a result.

Shinra was too complicated to even start thinking about.

"Never mind how much of my clientele I must've lost," he spoke again, voice even, "I'm just not willing to risk my life for the pleasure of getting my hands on yet another piece of the supernatural. There's plenty of that to go around."

_"I'm sure,"_ Namie said. She sounded bitter now.

"Some of the people there would kill me on sight. You know that."

_"They say Heiwajima's softened up."_

Izaya's grip on his phone tightened. "Shizu-chan could be spending his days petting kittens and I'd still refuse to get within a hundred mile of him," he declared.

It was more than he had wished to say. Namie welcomed his words with heavy silence, long enough for Izaya to compose himself again.

"I'm—" _sorry_ , he almost said again. He shuddered. "I don't know what you're trying to prove with all this. Even if I went back, it's not like you would be around to see it—whatever you're trying to achieve."

Namie took a while to answer. _"What if I was?"_

He stopped tapping his fingers against the controls of his chair.

_"I could come back,"_ she continued hurriedly. _"Nothing especially interesting's happening here."_

"Your _brother_ is there," he replied, baffled.

She exhaled harshly. _"He'll survive."_

_Will_ you _?_ he wanted to ask. But it was a more important use of his diseased brain to make sense of her words and her commitment—that she would be willing to put an entire ocean between herself and Yagiri Seiji just to see him again.

" _Did_ you miss me?" he asked. His heart was beating hard in his throat and he felt light-headed.

Hope felt weirdly like nausea.

She didn't immediately answer. In the few seconds it took her to speak Izaya's mind went through a loop, from hope to misery and back to hope again, because Namie lied like she was born with dishonestly on her tongue. She never hesitated. Lies came to her quicker than the truth.

_"I miss feeling like I matter,"_ she finally admitted. He had never heard her sound so miserable.

Izaya lifted his laptop up from his thighs just long enough to cross one knee above the other. The pain the movement caused grounded him, made him aware again of the ache in his back and the tingling along his arms. It made his computer's screen come alive and Mizuchi Yahiro's name flash before his eyes. From the other side of the room Sozoro's eyes were fixed on him, heavy with malice.

"I can't go back," he said at last. His throat felt tight, felt painful. "I'm sorry."

He knew what she had meant. He knew what she missed from him because he missed the same thing from her. But it wasn't enough. Namie could crumble all she wanted under the weight of her own loneliness, could offer him the first inch of the light year he truly wanted—it wasn't enough. Nothing was.

_"Whatever,"_ she breathed. _"Fuck you."_

"Yeah," he said softly.

She stayed silent for so long then that he thought she must have hung up. If it weren't for the lull of her breaths and the occasionally crack of static indicating background noises he would have cut the call short as well. It was already going to cost them both a fortune.

But then— _"I'm not giving up,"_ she said.

"On what?" he replied tiredly.

_"Anything. And especially not your ungrateful self."_

"Drop it, Namie." He felt exhausted now, all through his body. "You're just being pathetic."

_"I'd be more pathetic if I let the person who held me hostage for years slowly die just because he can't face his own mistakes,"_ she hissed.

"You're free now," he snapped back.

_"You should be grateful that I'm willing to even give you this much attention."_

Just because she was right didn't stop him from clenching his jaw until his ears rang and blood flooded his face hotly. "Get lost," he growled.

His thumb hit the _end call_ button before he let himself think about it.

He kept breathing hard for a while after that. Sozoro moved, stepping smoothly around the chair so that he could pick up the empty cup of coffee that Izaya hadn't realized he had dropped. Izaya pressed a weak hand against the side of the half-wall cutting the kitchen from the living-room and pushed himself away from it. He wheeled the chair back to the window manually and silently dropped his laptop on the coffee table there.

The screen lit up when he did. Namie had sent him another email. He opened it despite himself; all it contained was a link to a website called _IkeNEW!_.

Sozoro watched above his shoulder when he clicked it. "That was enlightening," he said. He sounded strained between amused and disgusted as always.

"How so?" Izaya replied evenly.

Sozoro chuckled. Izaya turned his head to look at him.

"I never thought you of all people would have a friend," Sozoro murmured. His eyes were gleaming unpleasantly.

 

* * *

 

Shiki could count the people he considered friends on one hand and still have fingers left. Even the very few who made it to that list were more partners and trusted colleagues than people he spent time being friendly with.

Aozaki used to joke that Shiki was married to the job. In truth, Shiki was not only married to the job, he was friends with it too.

So when Kine disappeared on the day they were supposed to go drinking together, Shiki didn't stop at asking Dougen and Mikiya for their help in finding him. He also summoned Celty Sturluson to meet him a few streets away from Raira Academy.

She came silent and regal and shrouded in absolute darkness. None of the golden sunset light touched her or her steed no matter how she moved. It was like watching pure blackness ride across the empty streets, and Shiki found himself distracted by the sight for a moment. He had only ever seen her in the quiet of his office or deep in the night—in places where light was scarce and danger was plenty.

"I need you to help me find someone," he said before she could even take out her phone to greet him.

She nodded her helmet slowly, and he felt a pang of regret. He rubbed a hand over his face as he sighed.

"I apologize," he muttered. "Today has been stressful."

She tapped his elbow lightly and held her phone up for him to read. _It's nothing._

"Thank you."

He liked it better when she wasn't wearing the helmet, but he didn't comment on it. They were out for everyone to see, even if the alley itself was deserted, all students from the high school long gone home from classes and clubs. It made sense that she would prefer to hide herself.

Shiki took a cigarette out of the golden box in his pocket and lit it. For half a second the sun reflected off the metal surface and blinded him, making him cough around his inhale. "Do you know a man named Kine?" he asked when the itch had gone from his lungs.

She hesitated visibly. When she typed again it was for too long for the answer to be a simple _yes_ or _no_.

It didn't surprise him.

_I don't know him directly,_ she told him. _But I'm pretty sure I've heard Shinra and Shizuo say his name_.

And though it pained him to ask, Shiki said, "Not from Orihara?"

She shook her helmet.

"Well." He sucked in the sweet tobacco smoke and felt his head swim. "Kine's gone missing."

She flailed. _Not that I don't want to help, but I really wouldn't know where to start looking_ —

"You did fine with me and those girls, didn't you?" he cut in with a smile.

_It wasn't the same_ , she replied. _I had help then. And you didn't even need me to free yourself from these people._

"They weren't very good."

It had been ridiculously easy to not only free himself of his chains but also control his subordinate—and even the child with green hair who had been taken with them. Though Shiki couldn't shake the feeling that he would be seeing more of the kid in the future, in the end, his presence hadn't made a difference. Good or bad.

Whoever had taken Kine was better. First of all because there weren't any clues or leads like there had been with the cult months ago. Second of all, because Kine had been gone for at least fifteen hours, and had yet to resurface.

Either he was dead or his kidnappers were extraordinarily good at their job.

"We've all let ourselves become soft," he groaned. He flicked the ashes off the tip of his cigarette and leaned heavily against the wall. "This city's been so tame for so long, we forgot how to prepare ourselves for it."

Celty raised her phone again. _I wouldn't have taken you for the superstitious type_.

"You'd be surprised."

He thought she might have smiled, then.

The last few days' news came to his mind again, and he sobered right out of mirth. "Kine's not the only one," he said in a low voice. "People have started disappearing again." Celty made as if to type frantically again, so he gently swept her hand away from her phone. "Not your fault. It could just be a coincidence. It's not that many people, and they're not especially remarkable, it's just that there's been more of them than usual lately."

Her shoulders dropped slowly. _Do you think they're connected?_

"I don't know," he admitted. "There's nothing to link them that I can think of. No obsession with urban legends or zombie movies. Maybe I'm getting senile, but I find them suspiciously _unconnected_ , though."

Celty leaned against the wall next to him. Her body was neither cold nor hot against his. It didn't feel like it had a temperature at all.

She typed slowly, so that he could read along as she did if he turned his head to the side. _I feel like I'm living a repeat performance. A new urban legend, a new gang, a new serial attacker._

"Feels like someone's playing with us," Shiki agreed somberly.

_I know not all of it is connected_. He shot her a sharp glance, but she shook her helmet again. _I won't say more than this_.

It made something tighten in his chest. Celty had access to a certain amount of intelligence, but it was a professional hazard rather than a profession, and not all of it was for sale. Rarely any of it was for sale.

"This is what we're missing," he said. He let the stub of cigarette fall to the dusty ground and crushed it beneath the sole of his shoe harshly. "A proper information network."

_Did no one take over after Izaya left?_

He tried not to envy the ease with which she said his name. He shook his head and looked up to the empty black room behind her visor, where her eyes should be. "There are informants. It takes two of them to do the work he provided for Awakusu on his own, though."

_He was a jerk_ , she wrote back.

It ripped a chuckle out of him. His mouth tasted sour. "Maybe. But he was good at his job. Or at least he favored our group enough to be."

Celty shrugged uncaringly. Shiki watched her walk back to her bike; the thing let out a soft sound, almost inaudible, like the neigh of a horse.

"I'll send you a picture of Kine and some more information," he called. She raised a thumb in his direction. "I'm not asking you to find him yourself, but any info you can get me would be helpful."

She straddled the pitch-black bike and took out her phone once more, tapping the screen quickly with gloved fingertips. When she was done she threw it at him. _I'm no Izaya, but I'll ask around_ , she had written.

"Thanks," he said, throwing the phone back to her. And, before she could leave: "Do you think he's alive?"

She paused at the mouth of the alley.

"Orihara," he clarified.

Shiki knew she had no eyes. No eyes, no mouth, no head. Still when she turned around he felt as if he was being looked at the way only Akabayashi could do—one eye closed and the other full of insufferable insight. He straightened his back and ignored the grey dust at his hip from leaning against a dirty alley wall like a common thug. Inside the pockets of his white suit jacket, his hands turned into fists.

She didn't say anything. She bowed her head quickly in an unmistakeable nod, and then she leaned over her bike and took off quicker than Shiki could follow.

All the air rushed out of his lungs. The empty alley echoed his exhale; for a second it sounded to him like the city itself was sighing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter took a lot out of me. I hate that I have to _ask_ this but I need support for everything I write, especially chaptered fics like this one. I came very close to discontinuing Not Justice and deleting it off AO3/making it restricted access only, because so few people took the time to engage with it after chapter 2. 
> 
> A 5k words chapter is at least 10 hours of work. The only thing I get in return for this labor is the pleasure of people interacting with my stories. Spending so much time trying my best to deliver the highest quality of content I can, only to watch the hits and kudos rise in utter silence, leaves me feeling like I've been punched, and like the people who read me think I'm some kind of emotion-free writing machine.
> 
> I'm not. I wouldn't post anything if I didn't want to hear from the people who like what I do. Please, if you enjoy what I spend so much time writing, drop me a word to tell me so. Silent consumerism hurts creators everywhere, and God knows I don't exactly have the strength of numbers following me to mask the fact that not even a tenth of you bother telling me "thank you" or "good job". If commenting here bothers you, you can also [tweet me](http://twitter.com/izanyas) or [message me on Tumblr](http://izanyas.tumblr.com). The options are many.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay (college). Immense thank you to my beta and friend Laidon aka ScarletCake.
> 
> Warnings: mentions of child abuse, references to adults taking advantage of children, the usual DRRR shtick.

**Not Justice  
** **Chapter 4**

Yahiro didn't expect Orihara Izaya to answer him at all. He was acutely conscious of his own nosiness in forcing the hand of Yagiri Namie for Orihara's contact info; even the twins had told him, _If he answers, it's bad news_. If he were a better person his key motivator in contacting the man with his half-baked plan would have been the anger on Mairu's face and the longing on Kururi's; but all he had was his curiosity, his lack of remorse thanks to the story Nozomi had told—and a vast hunch that he could get something out of it, something that would better Kuon's life. He didn't really care what happened to Orihara himself.

He didn't know if that was a normal thing to feel. On the one hand, he didn't know Orihara Izaya at all. On the other hand, he knew he could empathize with strangers given enough incentive. And though Orihara didn't seem to be a good person by any stretch of the imagination, he had almost died. Most people thought he was dead. He was estranged from his own home and from his own family. And yet Yahiro could only think of Nozomi's story. He couldn't put himself into Orihara's shoes and imagine the man experiencing enough pain or loneliness for what happened to him to have canceled what he did upon others.

On the first morning of September, several days after classes had started in full swing again at Raira, Yahiro got an email. _Good morning_ , it read. Yahiro skimmed through the pleasantries and to the signature, and then his eyes hurried back up again, a little wide.

_I'll be amenable to your questions only this morning_ , Orihara was saying. Yahiro was bad at gauging tone when face-to-face with someone, and he was even more terrible at it in writing. He didn't even know what Orihara looked like—there were no pictures of him at Mairu and Kururi's house. He had no idea if the man was being cold or welcoming.

He typed with trembling fingers: _Good morning_.

He stopped.

Where to start? His head started swimming with everything he wanted to know but didn't have a right to; he didn't know why he thought Orihara would answer freely where others who knew and cared about Yahiro went tight-lipped and white-faced when some topics came around. He wanted to know how Orihara survived a fight Aoba said he should've died in. He wanted to know who Orihara was exactly, what he had done to make himself so intrinsic to the lives of everyone Yahiro knew that his absence in the city felt like a gaping wound. He wanted to know about Celty Sturluson. He wanted to know about Kuon's past, even more. He wanted to know why Orihara had left Nozomi to lock herself inside of her own room and inside of her own head and didn't care enough to help her out of it.

He rubbed his thumb on the side of his phone nervously. In the end, all he typed was: _I'm sorry to bother you. Thank you for your patience_. He was already on his way to Raira. The gates of the school shone under the morning sun, and he thought he could see Ryuugamine waiting for him by the entrance.

He rushed the last few meters. "Good morning," he said, and the other boy smiled warmly, fidgeting with his glasses.

"Good morning. You're not too tired?"

Yahiro had volunteered to come over early, to help with the library. "I'm all right," he replied—and he jumped out of his skin when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Ryuugamine observed him curiously. "Everything okay, Mizuchi-kun?"

"Yes!" Yahiro replied.

He kept his hand in his pocket on the way to the library. His leg twitched in impatience while Ryuugamine explained which sections of the library he wanted him to tidy up and sort through—he felt guilty for it, because Ryuugamine always looked more tired than anyone Yahiro knew except for Kuronuma. He didn't have a right to show impatience of any kind.

Ryuugamine was barely out of the aisle when Yahiro took out his phone and carefully wiped the sweat off his palm before reading what Orihara had sent: _I'm not doing this for free. Any info you get out of me means you have to give me info in return. And no lying either_.

_I won't lie_ , Yahiro wrote. And, before Orihara could answer: _Who are you?_

It took a moment for the man to answer this time. Yahiro placed his phone on the edge of a shelf after two minutes spent waiting, and started taking the books off another shelf and putting them back in the right order. He took notes of everything on a paper Ryuugamine had given him. When his phone finally buzzed again it moved by itself, almost falling to the floor before Yahiro caught it.

Yahiro swore under his breath. Ryuugamine chose this moment to peek into the aisle and look at him with a concerned frown.

"Are you okay?"

"'M fine," Yahiro muttered, red in the face. "Sorry. I just banged my toe against the wall."

"Be careful."

Orihara's new message was longer than the previous ones, and its tone even less friendly. _Funny that someone who went to the length you did to contact me shouldn't even know who I am_. He had used an emoji there, but Yahiro wasn't too sure how he was supposed to read it. _My name is Orihara Izaya. I'm an informant. Until a year and a half ago I lived in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and worked there at the service of many individuals and groups, until special circumstances forced me to leave. Who are you, Mizuchi Yahiro-kun?_

It wasn't anything Yahiro didn't know before. He hadn't expected the man to be so open about it, though. Maybe it was a cheap way of testing the man's honesty, but it was still worth wasting a question for.

He thought for a moment about how to introduce himself; he didn't want to give Orihara anything about his hometown or his strength—though Orihara might find out himself if he looked into Ikebukuro's recent events. Yahiro didn't know how informants worked. He had only seen them in the old movies his mom loved to watch on the rare occasions she closed the inn and made dinner for them. He used to watch them with her, when he was little. He stopped later because he didn't like seeing violence on TV.

_I'm a student at Raira Academy. I know your sisters and I'm friends with Kotonami Kuon. I'm sorry for bothering you. Kururi-senpai gave me Yagiri-san's number and told me she would know how to contact you. Why did you leave Ikebukuro?_

His thumb hover over the _send_ button for a moment. He stood in the shadow of the aisle, morning sun pouring onto his back from the window.

He thought of Kuon, and hit send.

He didn't have to wait long for Orihara to answer this time. Yahiro still bent down and took a few minutes to deal with his fast-beating heart and the books spread all over the floor. He sorted two entire shelves before the impatience bit at him too hardly for him to ignore it anymore.

He unlocked his screen; Orihara's answer was short and to the point. _I got badly hurt in a fight against Heiwajima Shizuo and decided to move out of the city. What is your address?_

_Couldn't you have stayed and avoided Heiwajima-san?_ Yahiro typed back, biting his lip.

_It's my turn to ask questions, Mizuchi-kun_ , Orihara said coldly.

Yahiro rubbed the deep scar on the last joint of his left thumb with his index. He sent his address to the man without much hesitation.

_He would've come to finish the job if he knew I was still alive and around_ , Orihara sent, without waiting. _Who is in power in Ikebukuro at the moment?_

Yahiro hesitated. _I don't know_.

"Mizuchi-kun?" Ryuugamine said from behind him.

Yahiro dropped his phone in surprise; he only restrained himself from shoving his fingers into Ryuugamine's mouth and knocking his teeth out because part of him knew Ryuugamine was harmless, was a comforting and soothing presence in his life rather than a threatening one. He turned around slowly, cold drowning his throat and his lungs and sweat slicking his nape.

Ryuugamine shot a glance at the phone Yahiro was still holding to chest-level. It took a moment for Yahiro to realize he should probably lock the screen again. He cleared his throat after he did. "Yes?"

"Sorry," Ryuugamine said in his soft voice. He pushed his glasses up before speaking again. "I was just going to tell you that I'm almost done, and classes start in fifteen minutes."

"Oh." Yahiro glanced at everything he hadn't done. "Right."

"That's fine. You can come back after class if you want, or another day."

Yahiro bowed deeply. "Thank you."

Ryuugamine smiled and went back to the front of the library. Yahiro looked at his phone again once he was out of view.

_Then let me ask this another way; who or what are the key elements of concern, of rumor, right now?_

Yahiro was a key element of concern. But he didn't want to mention any of that to Orihara Izaya, or to mention Snake Hands, or IkeNEW!, and take the risk of Orihara Izaya associating those with Kuon.

The thing about Kuon had to come out of a place of personal interest.

Biting his lips and regretting his words, he typed, _The Headless Rider and the Slugger._ And then: _I don't think Heiwajima Shizuo is the kind to kill anyone. I don't know what you did to make him mad, but he wouldn't have killed you for it_.

_I take it this is your next question, but since you're lying to me, I don't think I have to be honest anymore_.

_I'm not lying_. Yahiro found that it was harder to swallow when writing those words.

All Orihara sent back was a link to a video. And Yahiro clicked it despite the cold queasiness in him.

It was himself, wrecking havoc on the old warehouse where Kuon and the others had been taken, wrapped in the shadow-suit Celty had made to protect him. Tearing skin and breaking bones and knocking out teeth. Looking straight at the shaky phone camera capturing him doing the only thing he was good at with wide, inhuman eyes.

He didn't even need the sound. He remembered every squelch of blood and every crack of bone and every scream of pain. Yahiro closed the video when it started playing again from the start like some sort of a nightmare.

_Who is it?_ Orihara was asking.

_Don't you already know?_ Yahiro replied, and all he felt was hollow.

_They call it Snake Hands, or the Headless Rider's lover, but I doubt the last one's true. Since you avoided talking about it I have to assume that you know more than what I can gleam from IkeNEW_.

_You know IkeNEW?_

_I know it's a front for whoever Snake Hands is_.

So Orihara didn't know about Nozomi and Kuon or Yahiro himself. Yahiro knew he was shaking, knew the pit of dread in his stomach and how dangerous it was for him to stand there and not move; but Yahiro was used to being in the presence of a direct threat, of something he could make bleed. He didn't know how to run away from an email exchange. The arrow of the orange wall clock above the bookshelves was almost pointing to his departure from the library and in the direction of his homeroom. He wouldn't be able to message Orihara much once class started.

He wrote, _I want to know why you left the Kotonami siblings helpless when you left_.

He quickly put away all the books he wasn't done sorting and grabbed his bag, making his way to the entrance. Ryuugamine stopped him on his way.

"I really appreciate you helping out," he told Yahiro with a timid smile. "No one else wanted to wake up early to help me tidy up the library for the semester."

"That's okay," Yahiro replied, face warm. "I don't mind helping."

The library was a quiet place. Somewhere he didn't have to think too hard on Kuon, and Himeka, and the fact that videos of his accesses of violence were circulating online and being viewed by thousands.

Yahiro swallowed. "I'm sorry I wasn't very efficient this morning."

"That's okay." Ryuugamine seemed to hesitate before putting a hand on Yahiro's shoulder briefly—and Yahiro didn't tense but he didn't move or smile either, so Ryuugamine quickly took it back. "He tends to have this effect on people."

"Sorry?"

But all Ryuugamine did was shake his head and smile this discomforted, shaky smile of his, looking over to the window with regret painted on his face like a shadow. "It's almost time for class."

"Right," Yahiro replied.

He took his phone out of his pocket again before he could help it; Orihara's message was short, so it wasn't like there was much to hide.

_I prioritized my life_ , it read. No emoji this time.

Not even Yahiro missed the cold, uncaring tone of it, though.

When he raised his head Ryuugamine was staring at him frankly, and he didn't look anything like Yahiro had come to expect out of him.

Yahiro opened his mouth to apologize for his rudeness, but Ryuugamine shook his head.

"No need," he said.

His hand came up and wrapped itself around Yahiro's and the phone it was holding—the contact not as startling as the way Ryuugamine smiled this time.

"Say hi for me, okay?" It was weird, to hear him talk. Weird to associate the growing licks of fear in Yahiro's stomach, the eerie smile on Ryuugamine's face, and his voice, soft and trembling as always. "If you could bring him back… I don't think that would be so bad."

Yahiro breathed in softly. "What do you mean?" he asked, not much louder than a whisper.

Ryuugamine looked pained. "It's not something selfless. Well, it couldn't be anyway—if I really wanted Izaya-san back I could've called him myself—"

Yahiro took back his hand and stepped backwards; Ryuugamine exhaled; his arm dropped back to his side slowly.

"The thing is," he continued, "that some… friends of mine would never come back here. Not unless they thought me and—not unless they thought I was in some sort of danger."

Yahiro had no idea what he was talking about. Who he was talking about. He knew it must show on his face, if one were to look past the wide, bloodless eyes and the fear turning itself inside out and into hostility.

Ryuugamine was starting to shake. "You can feel it when you talk to him, can't you?"

It took a moment for Yahiro's jaw to unclench. "Feel what?"

He had never noticed the specific shade of grey that made Ryuugamine's eyes; through the lenses of his glasses they were almost blue, but when he was looking over them, it was the color of wet metal and fire.

"The danger," Ryuugamine said, exhilarated.

 

* * *

 

Celty took a turn into one of the smaller streets behind Sunshine. Tourists didn't go there as much as they did the wide, open spaces cut into the cityscape. They wouldn't have noticed her even if she did walk among them anyway, because she didn't stand out in the evening like she did in the day. The night lights were kind to her because they couldn't touch her—she could practically disappear from the human eye if she stood still enough at this time of the day and changed her yellow helmet for one made of her own shadow. People walked past her without ever seeing the Dullahan standing against the wall behind them.

She had finished her last delivery of the day. Earlier she had received more info from Shiki about Kine, the man who had disappeared—mainly where he had been seen last before vanishing into thin air.

She still felt guilty for accepting to help. Shiki had been nothing but courteous to her in the two years they'd known each other; she felt like she was doing his a disfavor, entertaining the hope that his friend was still alive.

Not that she would stop looking in her spare time. But she didn't think a yakuza disappearing could mean anything other than his death.

She examined the street thoroughly. She took the time to let her shadow roam the walls and listen under doors and windows; but all the conversations she heard were inane, irrelevant.

The man had been gone for days, now. No wonder.

She took the photo Shiki had given her out of her body suit. She _felt_ like the face on it was familiar, but she couldn't pinpoint it exactly. Kine was a man with very fine features and no hair, with darker skin than Shiki's, with a somber look to him that looked more like a cop's than a yakuza's. Shiki did say he was working as a private investigator now.

She couldn't escape the feeling that she had seen him somewhere without knowing who he was.

"Celty-san?"

Celty jumped; it was more out of habit than out of real surprise, because her body wasn't like humans'. She didn't have a heartbeat to spike up or a brain to send shocks down her limbs. Her shadow quickly took in the shape and voice of the person standing next to her, and her shoulders dropped, though there was no real tension holding them upright.

_Good evening_ , she typed on her phone. Anri smiled at her and walked forward a little more, her pretty face flushed by the cool night air. "Good evening," she replied sweetly. "Are you on your way to a delivery?"

Something moved behind Anri. Anri herself seemed to remember she wasn't alone, because she stepped to the side so her friend could be seen.

It was one of Izaya's sisters. The soft-spoken one. "Hi," she whispered.

Celty nodded her helmet at her. Kururi—she thought her name was Kururi, but she had barely ever met the girl, and always in the company of her more visible twin—was looking at her with wide eyes and fidgeting with the collar of her uniform.

Celty didn't really have a grasp on time. Her past was as endless to her as her future; she felt years pass like hiccups, like short bursts of wind. She had only ever developed a fear of growing old through a fear of losing Shinra. But, in this moment, seeing Izaya's sister, taller and older and different… she felt as though years had gone by since that day she was whole and then broken again.

She felt the wisps of black smoke in her helmet tighten into a more tangible shape from distress. Her fingers flew to the distraction of her phone and of small talk. _I'm about to head home, actually. What about you both?_ she asked them.

"I was out buying groceries," Anri said, lifting the plastic bags she was holding. "I met Kururi-chan on the way and she offered to help me."

Kururi nodded somberly. "Mairu's at the dojo," was all she said. She was holding a bag too.

_You shouldn't be out at this hour_ , Celty replied half-heartedly. As she expected, Anri smiled darkly and Kururi didn't look fazed in the slightest. _Okay, my bad. Just be careful, all right?_

Anri laughed behind her hand. "I don't think we risk anything around here, Celty-san."

Celty thought about Kine's hard, unsmiling face, and didn't say anything.

She felt something touch her elbow; Kururi was holding it tightly, and her eyes were fixed on the picture Celty was still holding between two fingers.

"That's Kine-san," she said.

The atmosphere seemed to change immediately. Anri leaned forward next to Kururi to look at the picture as well, and her faced turned from pleasantly private to the sort of painful she had stopped wearing only a few months ago. It made Celty feel terrible; made the heaviness she was experiencing more and more as time went by and she didn't cross the ocean separating her from her head feel all the more tangible.

_Do you know him?_ she typed warily.

Anri said, "He was with—" before biting her lips and looking to Kururi next to her.

"He's a friend of Iza-nii," Kururi replied.

_Not from Orihara?_ Shiki had asked her. The darkness on his face had nothing to do with the one on Anri's, though. He had been longing, but she was angry.

Kururi patted Anri's shoulder softly, and Anri seemed to come to some sort of a realization—her face paled and she turned to apologize to the other girl frantically. "S'okay," Kururi said dispassionately. "He probably was very mean to you."

Celty didn't think she had ever heard so many words come out of her mouth in a row. Kururi smiled at her, and it was easier now to see the changes from childhood to maturity, in the sharper angle of her jaw. She looked like her brother.

Celty hadn't even known that she could still recall Izaya's face to such detail.

She wished she could turn off her sight for a moment. She couldn't blink, didn't have any eyelids to close; the only time she couldn't see was when sleep took her.

_Have you seen him recently, then?_ And then, realizing how her question might be taken, she clarified: _Kine?_

Kururi shook her head. "Not since Iza-nii was in high school."

Celty looked at the picture again. Something was tugging at her memory, like the buzz of an insect in a room that she couldn't find and chase away. Her mind offered to her the sight of Raira Academy as it was when Shinra studied then—back when it was called Raijin. She remembered waiting there for him to come out so they could drive home together, because Shingen wanted them to bond. Because she felt lonely, and Shinra's brash affection was better than nothing.

If she could go back to that time now, she would slap herself for it.

She could see him now. Kine. Standing not far away from where she always parked, leaning against a old black car and smoking patiently as the students poured out—and she remembered seeing Shinra's black-haired middle school friend skipping toward him with glee on his face and too much eagerness to look very professional.

She hadn't thought much of it at the time. All Shinra had ever told her about the Orihara boy was that he was the bad sort, and Izaya himself never talked to her before a few more years. By then he was already _Orihara Izaya, the information broker_. Not a child. Not Shinra's school friend.

She couldn't recall Izaya looking any younger than he always did; and he always looked somewhere between twenty and thirty, like age didn't have an imprint on him—until that night with bruises in his eyes and soul and a knife between his ribs.

She knew he had been even worse off than he looked. She had felt the state of his spine when she stopped the bleeding.

"Hey."

Celty 'raised' her sight to Kururi's level. The girl was looking at her intently.

She typed: _Sorry. I got lost in my memories for a moment_.

Kururi scoffed, very lightly. "Iza-nii worked for him. Kine-san."

Celty hesitated; and then she replied, _I'm looking for him. He went missing a few days ago_.

"I've only seen him once," Anri muttered. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek. "He was waiting for—for that man outside of Raira General Hospital once."

Kururi smiled at her words, weirdly enough.

Celty didn't know where else to take the conversation. She was uneasy enough having brought up Izaya, even though Kururi didn't seem to mind. Anri had lost the flush to her face. She was staring at her feet with thin lips and a frown.

And, truly, this was as good a sign as any that Izaya was better off dead or gone. Too many children looked like this whenever his name came up.

She typed another quick message, hoping to clear the atmosphere: _I didn't expect you both to know anything, so it's okay. How about I walk you home?_

"Knight," Kururi said.

It made Anri's face relax a little, which was good enough for Celty.

She ran to the opening of the street where she had left Shooter. Her horse neighed when she patted his back gently, and she barely had to stir him in the right direction. His wheels turned by themselves so that she only had to gently push him forward. Kururi immediately touched the bike's pitch-black side when they were to her level.

_You can sit on his back if you want_ , Celty told her. She added a smiling face to her message for good measure.

Kururi immediately leapt on Shooter's back and patted his sides like she would his flanks if he were in his real form. Celty let a tendril of her shadow escape and soothe his side as well so he'd know that everything was okay.

They started walking like this, Kururi seated on Shooter and making faint humming noises, Anri having retrieved her bags from her and walking on Celty's other side in silence. Caught inside the streets and with no open spaces in sight it was hard for Celty to see the sky for more than the dirt brown it was from yellow lamps; the sunset had come and gone already. Pretty soon she would be invisible to all that she didn't want seeing her.

"Things are changing," Kururi whispered after a couple minutes.

"How so?" Anri asked her.

Kururi traced a line on Shooter's back with her index. Celty didn't think humans could feel him like she could, warm and alive; but it seemed to be enough for her. She hadn't taken her hands off of him. "People leaving. People arriving," she answered. She looked at Celty again. "People coming back."

Behind her, Anri took in an awful breath.

_What do you mean?_ Celty said.

"Who's coming back?" Anri echoed loudly.

She sounded so tense that Celty immediately turned on her heels to face her; to touch her gently, to comfort her, to tell her than it didn't mean she had to go through all the fear she did when Ikebukuro was in uproar; and in her sight, not bothered by human limitations, she saw a shadow darker than hers fall onto Kururi and enclose its arms around her.

Celty didn't shout. She didn't freeze, or jump. She didn't have a heartbeat to spike up or a brain to send electric shocks down her limbs.

She spread her black smoke around like a net, made it sticky, made it unbreakable, so whoever was pressing a hand against Kururi's mouth to choke her screams and dragging her toward the mouth of a pitch-black alley couldn't escape. She stayed right where she was and waited for the would-be abductor to get caught in her trap. Next to her Anri finished blinking, and her eyes started glowing red, and through her palm the sharp edge of Saika's blade poked out, filling the night air with its vile presence.

Celty made a mistake, then. She didn't recall Shiki's warnings. She didn't believe in life's ability to surprise her. She didn't move.

The shadow dug its heel into the ground and leapt, far higher than Celty had ever seen a human achieve; far higher than the edge of the net she had made a second ago; it caught Kururi tighter in its hold and fell on the other side of the wall separating this street from another one.

She heard Anri scream Kururi's name and jump on a trash bin to climb over the wall as well. Celty's hands found Shooter's steering wheel and he went off before she was even seated, running up the nearest building's façade and down onto the street behind.

There was no one.

_No_ , Celty thought. Shooter sped up into the alley before she needed to tell him to; Celty spread her shadows as far around herself as she could, into every nook and cranny of this street and its neighbors, looking for the feeling of flesh instead of stone. Looking for Kururi's heartbeat.

"Kururi-chan!" she heard Anri scream again, far, far behind her, horrified and disbelieving.

Celty rode around the neighborhood twice before she had to admit that Kururi was _gone_. Which was impossible, because it had barely taken her a minute to go around, and nothing human could be this fast. Not even Hollywood had been that fast. Not even _Shizuo_.

_No, no, no_ , she kept thinking, like a mantra; in her mind all she could see was Kururi's quiet and hopeful expression as she rode Shooter earlier; the way she touched him like he was something comforting to her; the way she spoke, soft and heartfelt, eerie but not unkind. And she couldn't feel emotions like humans did, she couldn't breathe or scream or sob, but all of the smoke inside and out of her was turning onto itself as if trying to sever its particles into nothing.

_People have started disappearing again_ , Shiki had told her. And maybe that was still Celty's mistake after all this time; to think that _people_ could never include her or anyone she knew. To think that anything seemingly ordinary happening here could ever be only that. That she was safe, and her loved ones safe, that her story was done being written.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, thank you all SO MUCH for the support last chapter... I think it's the first time that I post anything and don't immediately suffer a crisis because I feel like people aren't interested in it. Please don't let me down this time either. Exciting stuff is finally happening in the story!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: children in distress, references to child abuse, self-harm.

**Not Justice  
** **Chapter 5**

Shizuo's doorbell was ringing.

He couldn't parse how late it was, exactly. He didn't own a watch because they were expensive and too breakable, his TV was playing a movie on mute, and his phone was in the bathroom. It was late enough that the sky outside had been pitch black when he fell to the sleepless grogginess that had plagued him for a week and it was still black now, as he blinked himself out of it. Too late for anyone to come with anything but ill intentions or bad news.

He lifted a weak hand to his head and wiped the stickiness of drying drool off the corner of his lips. His lower back was aching from his position on the couch, back to the cushions but legs thrown to the side and to the floor. His spine cracked ominously when he forced himself upright, and he groaned, tasting sweetness on his tongue as he did so.

Right. He had gone out with Tom to celebrate the other getting his stitches out at last.

The doorbell rang again. "Coming," he rasped, and then made a face. He wasn't tipsy anymore but the room was still a little rocky around him as he walked to the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of cold water from the fridge to rinse the aftertaste of alcohol from his mouth and splashed some of it over his hands and over his face. The cold felt nice on his skin.

He only had a couple steps to take to get to the door. He pushed the fridge's door close with his foot before taking them and unlocking it, not bothering to check who it was.

He hadn't checked his door like this for a year and a half. There was no reason to anymore.

"Hi," Mairu said before the door was even fully open to her.

Shizuo froze.

Two years ago he would have thought about how he must look to her, hair mussed and face shining from the water, clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin, and no doubt the smell of liquor clinging to him like a ghost. But Mairu cut his thoughts short before they could wander ahead and into _Why_ territory. She bent over to walk under his arm and into his living-room as if she'd ever been here before—as if she and her sister had addressed a word to him since the day Izaya and himself tried to kill each other last.

The thought of Izaya's name snapped him out of shellshocked silence. "Mairu," he said carefully, voice rough from his half-sleep. "What… Uh. Sorry." He closed the door to give himself a moment away from her. "Do you want… something to drink? I have tea, or—"

"Thanks, Shizuo-san," she cut in. "I'll have tea." Her voice was full of something he couldn't place. It wasn't distaste and it wasn't sorrow, but for some reason he felt it ring through him as familiarly as if he had heard it over and over his entire life.

He shuddered. When he walked back into the kitchen to put some water to boil, he didn't look at her. She took a seat at the tiny table behind him as he prepared everything, her shoe tapping lightly against the foot of her chair but otherwise unnaturally still. Unnaturally quiet.

He placed the pot on the table in front of her alongside a clean mug when the tea was done steeping. He watched her pour it herself—her hands, not her face, just the purple nail polish she wore that had started to flake on her right thumb and index—and then he leaned against the counter opposite her. He didn't feel right sitting down with her.

He had thought they wouldn't talk to him again. Mairu and Kururi both. It hadn't been an obvious thing, they were never close, they had just… drifted away. Smiling briefly in his direction when they crossed paths and then turning away without a word and without time for him to even smile back. Shizuo had resigned himself to this from them, and refused to think too hard on why.

"Where's Kururi?" he asked, trying to soften the tension.

Mairu didn't reply. She put the pot back onto the table and drank straight from the mug without waiting for the tea to cool; Shizuo looked at her face before he could help it, ready to offer cold water in case she burned herself, but she didn't even flinch from the heat. She took a couple long sips without any sign that the tea was anything but lukewarm.

Shizuo exhaled slowly.

"How've you been, Shizuo-san?" she asked all of a sudden. Then, nose slightly twisted: "Besides the hangover."

"Oh." He scratched his chin, cheeks warm. "Uh, I'm good. Sorry about that, I was out drinking with my boss and I kind of just passed out when I got home."

"That's totally understandable," she replied with a nod.

He hesitated for a moment. "Do… you wanna tell me why you're here?"

"Can't I just come see an old friend?"

Shizuo wouldn't call any kid he knew his _friend_. It didn't matter that he could see how much Mairu had grown since the last time they had talked or that she was closer to eighteen than nine, now. He didn't think he'd ever be able to rid himself of the image of her at that age, with her knees bleeding and her mouth open on constant chatter, Kururi standing in her shadow in utter silence.

"What time is it?" he mumbled, patting his pockets uselessly for the shape of his phone. Mairu replied before he could get the excuse to go fetch it from his bathroom and compose himself on the way. "It's three-fifteen in the morning," she answered, lips caught against the rim of the tea mug. Her fingers were getting red from how tightly she was holding it.

"Okay," Shizuo said in what he hoped was a neutral tone. "So, can I know why you're here at three in the night, looking like your dog just died?"

She let out a high-pitched, nervous laugh, as insincere as it was ugly. "I'm a cat person! How dare you?"

"Mairu—"

Mairu dropped the empty mug on the table loudly and kicked her chair away from the table. It dragged onto the linoleum with a grating sound, and when she stood, it was with both her fists resting on the tabletop.

"Don't you think it's time you grew up, Shizuo-san?" she asked lightly.

Shizuo frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Isn't this the place you first moved in when you left the familial nest?"

"Well, yeah."

And all of a sudden her face twisted itself on disgust, and she gestured wide around her as if to show everything to see at once, looking like her entire body was thrumming on energy, ready to explode. "This is a disgrace," she spat out. "Hardly somewhere a proper adult should live, it looks like a college student's nest."

Shizuo felt irritation flicker inside him like an old lamp. He bit the inside of his cheek to choke it down before he answered: "Maybe so."

Mairu grit her teeth at this, looking disgruntled. She tried again: "Your own younger brother is so far ahead of you in life, don't you feel even the slightest bit ashamed of yourself?"

He did, but it wasn't any of her business; if anything the only reaction her words created in him was surprise that she hadn't mentioned Kasuka sooner.

He had thought Kasuka might be the reason she had come here. It had always been before—Kasuka, or Izaya, but Izaya was out of the question now.

"You're exactly the kind of adult no one my age wants to become," she continued passionately. "A bad job, a bad reputation, a bad, empty home. Do you even contribute anything to society, Shizuo-san?"

She walked around the table to stand right before him, and then she punched him, right into his ribcage. He hardly felt it though the disbelief clouding his mind; for a second Mairu stood as still as he was, shock bleeding into her young face; then he heard the sound of her teeth knocking together and of the rage-filled groan rising out of her, and he didn't move when she struck him again.

And again, and again, and again.

"What the fuck, Mairu?" he said eventually. It took another moment before he realized that though _he_ didn't hurt at all, _she_ might injure herself hitting him like this—he took hold of her wrists to stop her blows, wincing when he noticed that she had cut herself on a button of his shirt. One of her knuckles was bleeding.

"Release me," she ordered through her teeth, breath coming short.

"Not before you tell me what the shit you're doing—" Shizuo saw the way she hunched forward and his body understood before his mind did—he released her wrists before she could try to rip them out of his grip with all the strength of her body and break them while doing it. "Mairu!"

"Don't _call_ me that," she hissed.

It was impossible to mistake what he had felt from her earlier, now. It wasn't distaste and it wasn't sorrow—it was anger, the likes of which he hadn't seen on anyone but her brother. Vicious, inside and out, as if she was poisoning herself on it at the same time. Her face was red, her hair in disarray; now that he was looking he thought she must not have changed out of yesterday's clothes either, and there were dark circles under her red eyes, as if she had cried herself awake, over and over.

"Don't call me that," she repeated, trembling and unaware of his thoughts.

"What should I call you, then?" Shizuo asked evenly.

She sniffed. Her face looked offended at that fact, and she grit her teeth at him again. "Call me Orihara."

He couldn't do that, and she knew it. She knew why. "Please, just—tell me what's wrong."

"No!" she yelled. "Go away! I don't want to see you, or think about you, it was a stupid idea anyway—" she stopped abruptly, and her inhale sounded like a gasp.

"You came _here_ ," Shizuo pointed out angrily. "Will you fucking tell me why already?"

"I hate you," she replied, and he felt as if he had been punched this time, more physically than anything her fists had achieved. "K-Kuru-nee said not to, that it wasn't your fault, that he asked for it, but she was being _stupid_ , and now she's—"

He saw her eyes shine with tears before they started rolling down her face, before she heaved in a breath through her nose wetly. His stomach felt hollow with horror and disgust and the first inklings of understanding. If he hadn't had her at the brink of sobs in front of him he would have said Izaya's name, or apologized, maybe—said sorry for something that he didn't know he was sorry for but carried around in his nightmares and in his dreams alike, every day, every night.

But instead, all he asked was: "Where's Kururi?"

Mairu made the most gut-wrenching sound he had ever heard. It was a whine and a sob at once, and it made her sound nine again, made her look as she had when they had met. Bloody knees and a big mouth.

But she had been smiling, then. Not howling in anger and pain in the middle of Shizuo's home.

"She's _gone_ ," Mairu sobbed. "I can't _find her_."

Shizuo reached forward to grab her shoulder with his hand without thinking, but hers flew up even faster to stop it. Her polished nails dug into his palm in warning.

"What do you mean?" he heard himself say.

Her grip on him was shaky. "She's gone," she repeated, voice breaking on the word. "S-Someone took her away, and I can't find her."

"Who—"

"Ask your headless friend," Mairu replied through her tears. She was looking at the ground with wide eyes, as if she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed whole by it. "She was too weak to stop them, and now because of her and you and Iza-nii, she's _gone_!"

Shizuo's head hurt and his throat ached. More than that, however, it was the nausea creeping up his throat that prevented him from forming any word in answer. When he breathed, he smelled fire.

"Iza-nii's alive," Mairu continued with a hiccup. She dropped Shizuo's hand and wiped her face with her palm, like a child. "And somehow, he got her kidnapped. Isn't that great, Shizuo-san? You're not a murderer after all. You didn't kill him. He's scheming around like the filthy worm he is and he let his own family be harmed again, but at least _your_ hands are clean."

There was no white in her eyes when she looked at him again. Only red from burst blood vessels and black from her pupils. Her irises looked crimson too in the dim light of his home.

He swallowed painfully. His mouth was drier even than it had been when he woke up. "Are you—"

" _Yes_ , I'm sure," she cut in, acidic. "He's alive. And he's going to come back soon."

Shizuo's belly pulsed. His breath felt short, caught in his throat the way it had been almost two years prior when he stood on that rooftop, looking up at the sky and at Izaya's empty eyes.

Mairu smiled at him. It wasn't a happy sort of smile—if anything, it looked like she was trying to hurt him with it, like the edges of it had been sharpened to blade-like. "What are you gonna do about it, then?" she asked. "Will you try to kill him again?"

Shizuo remembered a time when she would eagerly ask him the same. When Kururi would shrug her shoulders at the suggestion of her brother's death. He remembered a time when he thought himself in the same sort of stasis, forever stuck in a loop of aimless violence. No end and no beginning.

He never would have guessed what it felt like to live beyond the end. To have the violence take aim and strike true for once.

Mairu didn't wait for him to reply any longer. "You've become weak too," she commented. Her voice was soft now, her sobs abated. She looked exhausted. "You and the Black Rider and even Iza-nii… this isn't your city anymore. There are better people around to take care of it now. Stronger people. You'd all be better off dead."

Shizuo didn't answer.

For some reason, it made tears gather up in her eyes once more. "Say something!" she ordered. "Grow up! Get over it! Hit me!"

"No," he said. He blinked, willing the buzz out of his head. "I'm not going to hit you."

"You're pathetic, you're so—"

She choked, standing in front of him and trembling through her entire body. The light above his sink was gleaming on her, shining off the wet trails on her face and the sweat along her arms. The blood on her fingers. She fell to her knees without another word, rasping out painful breath after painful breath and sounding like she was about to die. Her cut hand clutched the front of her dress, staining the green fabric an angry red, spilling more blood down her wrist and onto his floor.

"I hate that I need you," she whined. "Celty-san said the thing that took her was stronger and faster than she is, and I can't put Mizuchi-kun in more danger, he's already bringing Iza-nii back, you're the only one who can—"

"Mairu…"

"I don't hate you," she said, rubbing her face harshly. "I'm sorry, I'm a liar. I'm just like him. I never hated you and I'll never hate you, Shizuo-san."

Shizuo kneeled down next to her without knowing what to do. It didn't matter, though; she crawled forward and buried her face in his chest, where she had punched him earlier, and her arms wrapped themselves around his torso, hands linked behind his back.

"Please help me," she wheezed. "Please find her, _please._ " Her words became unintelligible, muffled against him or swallowed by her own sobs, he couldn't tell. When she raised her head again her entire face was crimson, smeared with tears and snot, strands of hair standing electrified above it. "I'm _sorry_ ," she repeated, with none of the anger she had displayed earlier, and all of the fear. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Shizuo could only lift a hand and press it behind her back in a semblance of a hug. "I've been looking for hours," Mairu moaned. He had never heard anything sound as broken as she did then. "Celty-san came to tell me and I ran out and ran everywhere, but I couldn't find her."

_It's okay_ , he almost said, by automatism, the way he would have if he were ten and Kasuka eight. The way he did whenever Kasuka was upset enough that it showed on his face. But Mairu wasn't his sister. She didn't work like he and Kasuka did.

He thought she might care very little for empty reassurances.

"I'll help," he said instead.

He didn't know how he would. He didn't even know if he could. But Mairu's hold tightened all at once, her _Thank you_ dying pressed against his clothes.

Her hair smelled like smoke.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Aoba did after Mairu called him was text Kuon, _What did you do?_

Kuon's reply came back just as fast: _I'm not responsible for K.'s kidnapping and I don't know who is behind it_.

Aoba pressed call before he even finished reading. _"It's useless,"_ Kuon snapped without bothering with greetings. _"I've been looking for days already, and I have no idea who's responsible for all the disappearances."_

"Did you or did you not put her in danger?" Aoba replied.

There was a moment of silence, brief, but enough to spread cold through Aoba's lungs. He felt like he was drowning by the time Kuon took a breath to answer. _"No,"_ he said. _"Or if I have, then it wasn't on purpose."_

"So she was collateral damage, then."

_"I'm worried too!"_ Aoba had seen little enough actual feeling out of Kuon that the volume of his voice cut him short. _"I hold no grudge toward her or her sister. I like them. There's nothing to gain for me in putting them in harm's way."_

And though he regretted the words before they even came out of his mouth, Aoba said, "But you have a grudge against Orihara Izaya, don't you."

A pause, filled with breathless surprise.

"I've been watching the man for years," Aoba continued, heart beating in his throat. "Long before he died. I know all about the girls he took in."

There was a hissing sound from the other side of the line, barely human, and then Kuon's voice, icy: _"If you want to play this game, I think your sibling's worse than mine, Kuronuma-senpai."_

Aoba's throat constricted as if a hand was wrapped around his neck, slowly choking him; his ears rang with the notes he had gathered out of the mouth of the Blue Square member he had put in charge of watching over Ran's activities in Awakusu.

His brother had contacted Horoda just a few days ago, after all. Right as Horoda came out of prison.

"Fine," he grit out. "So we all have shitty siblings."

Kuon didn't take the bait about Nozomi, and Aoba tried not to seethe over how easy it seemed for him. Or for Mairu and Kururi, for that matter.

He could never think about Ran without feeling like a sinking stone.

_"If anyone put her in danger, then it wasn't me,"_ Kuon continued evenly. _"Even if her kidnapping was collateral damage from something on my end, it wouldn't make any sense to take her. You and I would be much more useful targets."_

Aoba couldn't help but agree. Yet the Blue Squares had been absolutely unaffected by the ten-odd people who had vanished from all over the city; not one of them even knew the victims personally. No relatives or friends among them. Kururi was the first to mean anything more than that, and it made no sense to kidnap her—Kururi wasn't linked to anything illegal that he knew of. She was just a high school girl. Her last bond to her brother's world had been severed when Orihara died and Yagiri Namie fled the country.

The Black Rider was a possibility, but a thin one. She had been targeted in the past, even in recent memory, and Kururi had not once featured into the trouble she caused around her. Heiwajima Shizuo had pretty much retired from being a menace. Kishitani Shinra was all but a memory as well, though his business was still thriving, and Aoba doubted Kururi or Mairu ever thought about Kishitani much, no matter what he might have meant to their brother in the past.

Aoba bit the nail of his thumb absently. He chewed on the skin around it until sharp pain soared through it, and then he said: "If you and I aren't the targets, and if we're not even _involved_ … then who is?"

_"I hate admitting this to you, but I have no idea. IkeNEW hasn't relented any useful information. I know you're keeping an eye on Awakusu-kai, but since you haven't said anything, I'm guessing they aren't responsible either."_

"One of their men got taken," Aoba replied. "Former men, I should say. But he's not one of their enemies, and they've been looking for him."

_"Who?"_

"His name is Kine." Kuon's silence after that made tension knot itself at his shoulders and his face twitch anxiously. "What is it?"

_"Kine… this is someone related to Orihara Izaya too, right."_

Aoba picked at the stinging skin around his thumb with the nail of his index. "All of Awakusu-kai is linked to Orihara. And Orihara is dead anyway."

Kuon stayed silent.

"Kotonami," Aoba said lowly. "Orihara is dead. He's not linked to any of it. Don't let paranoia fool you."

_"I'm wondering if you aren't letting just that happen, Kuronuma-senpai."_

Aoba's grip on his phone was forceful, now. "I was _there_ when Heiwajima Shizuo broke him down into pieces. I saw him get stabbed. I looked for him in every hospital, at every doctor's, legal or not—he's dead. There's no way he could've survived those wounds without immediate help, he was fucking _bleeding out_."

_"I need to check something,"_ Kuon interrupted, voice strangled. _"I need to ask—"_

Either he stopped himself halfway or the call cut entirely; but the silence of the line rang as loudly as a bell in Aoba's ear.

He dropped his hand slowly into his lap. His mother's apartment was dark around him. The screen of his laptop was unlit from not being used in minutes, and barely any streetlight filtered in through the closed blinds of his room's window. He could only hear the faint hum of the ventilation system and the rush of cars from the street underneath, almost like waves at sea.

"Mizuchi Yahiro," he realized out loud.

He had directed Mizuchi to the twins days ago in order to crush the boy's curiosity. To make him understand that Orihara was a thing of the past that he shouldn't poke at, and with the hope that even if he did contact Yagiri Namie, she would be just as unwilling to cooperate as Aoba himself was.

Orihara Izaya was dead.

He had to be.

Aoba found Mikado's name in his contact list without thinking. He pressed the call button despite the late hour, knowing that Mikado hardly slept now because of the pain and the nightmares. And indeed, Mikado picked up after only two long beeps had rung in the silence, his voice devoid of sleep: _"Aoba-kun?"_

"Hey," Aoba said. "I have bad news."

He heard Mikado shift on his bed and a small, pained groan escape him. _"What's wrong?"_

_You know what's wrong_ , he thought. _If Mizuchi is doing something, you know about it_. "Orihara Kururi got kidnapped earlier tonight."

Mikado didn't immediately respond. Aoba heard him move some more, no doubt standing up from the bed and looking out of the window of his new apartment. Mikado always liked to stand by doors and windows in situations like this, as if trying to secure an escape route, be it running away or jumping to his death.

_"Are you calling to ask about Mizuchi-kun?"_ Mikado asked.

Aoba ground his teeth together in rage and threw off his blanket. He sat at the edge of his bed, running trembling fingers through his hair as he spoke: "So you're involved in whatever he's doing."

_"I don't know what he's planning. You were the one who told me to keep an eye on him, remember? You're the one who showed me that video of him fighting Heiwajima-san."_

"Don't act cute now, senpai," Aoba snapped back.

_"You know, you don't have to call me this anymore. We're in the same grade now."_ He sounded teasing, and a little bashful.

"You did way more than keep an eye on him, though, didn't you?"

Mikado marked a pause before replying. _"I just gave him a little push. I think."_

Aoba's heart was beating hard against his chest, and the cold was spreading again, all the way to his fingertips. "What did you do?"

There was a sound on the end that he thought was the window's latch being opened; wind brushed against Mikado's receiver and cracked over the line gently. _"You might hate me if I tell you."_

Aoba didn't think he could ever bring himself to hate Mikado, but Mikado didn't need to know that. "Just… tell me. I don't care what it is." Kururi's face flashed before his eyes, gentle and quiet, and to his horror Aoba felt his throat ache and his eyes burn. He had avoided thinking about her so directly, but he couldn't escape it now. She was gone. " _Please_."

_"I noticed that Mizuchi-kun was emailing someone this morning,"_ Mikado said softly. _"I didn't really try to pry, but he had his phone open on the messages, so…"_

"Who was he talking to?"

Mikado hesitated. _"Izaya-san."_

Aoba closed his eyes and pressed against his mouth with his closed fist. He tasted bile at the back of his tongue, felt a corresponding ache in his stomach; he hadn't eaten since lunch, and in that moment, all he felt was giddy, nervous relief. He thought he might have thrown up on the spot if he had.

"Orihara Izaya is dead," he said, for the fourth time that night.

He heard the small, well-meaning hum of pity Mikado let out through the buzz in his ears. _"I know you don't want to hear it. But from what I've seen, Mizuchi-kun is trying to get him to come back here. I'm sorry."_

Aoba exhaled harshly. "You're sorry," he repeated. "But you encouraged him anyway."

_"I did."_ There wasn't a hint of remorse in his voice. _"I like to think that we see eye-to-eye on most things, Aoba-kun, and I'm staying out of your business. I'm not going to get involved anymore. But there are things I want as well."_

"The last time you followed your own agenda ended up with you bleeding out of multiple stab wounds for being an idiot."

_"I'm aware of that,"_ Mikado replied, annoyed. _"Izaya-san was never responsible for what I did, though. And I need him here for other reasons."_

Aoba was shaking through his entire body by now. He knew Mikado would hear it on his voice, but he spoke anyway: "Orihara is nothing more than a glorified bully. The city went up in flames for his sick enjoyment, _your friends_ ended up hurt and isolated because of him. He's—" a terrible brother, a terrible person _._ Someone who could make Heiwajima Shizuo strike with the intent to kill. "He deserves to be dead. Even if not literally, he deserves to stay dead for this city. He deserves to have no one even say his name, ever again."

_"I understand how you feel,"_ Mikado said hesitantly. _"But I don't think he does."_

Aoba cut the call short. His palms were damp with sweat, his nape hot under sticky strands of his hair. If he were to look at himself in a mirror now he knew he would look feverish. When he swallowed it was to push back the bitter of the bile, mouth dry and eyes burning.

He could recall the last time he had seen Orihara Izaya as well as if it had happened only an hour ago. The quality of the memory was photographic, every speck of blood on Orihara's broken body as stark as if sunlight was shining on them, the sound of his bones breaking so clear that Aoba could almost feel it physically. Orihara had already looked more dead than alive by the time Heiwajima Shizuo had dragged himself to his level, cold and quiet and more terrifying than anything Aoba had ever seen—a hundred, a thousand times more terrifying than Mizuchi Yahiro had looked clad in black from head to toe.

Orihara couldn't have meant to survive this fight. He had engaged in it with the kind of bone-deep satisfaction that only the suicidal harbored.

Aoba had no doubt that wherever he was, Orihara hadn't changed. Not in the ways that mattered—not in a way that would make him try to mend his relationship with his sisters, at least.

Not in a way that could make him care that Kururi was gone.

He bit his lips until he tasted blood. And, though it was childish, he wished that Orihara had died with the same taste of metal and salt on his tongue that day. Forgotten in the middle of an unseeing crowd.

 

* * *

 

Izaya woke up to pitch darkness and confusion. It was too early for even Sozoro to be up; the hotel suite was as silent as a tomb and almost as dark. His bed creaked when he sat up, and the disgruntled noise he let out when pain flared from his lower back and through his legs was lost to the quiet entirely. For a moment he looked around the room without understanding why he had woken up at all. He didn't feel hot, or cold. There was no sweat along his back and no queasiness in his belly to tell him that he had just come out of a nightmare.

He patted the table by his side unseeingly, until his fingers reached the nearest phone he could find. He had to squint to make out the bright numbers on the clock—four in the morning.

Almost as soon as he unlocked the screen, the device vibrated between his fingers, and an email notification lit up to Namie's name.

He looked at it for a second without knowing if he should read it or simply delete it. Namie had only sent him two messages since they had called, both of which had for theme the mysterious new urban legend that Ikebukuro had given birth to, as well as tidbits of information on people he had known back there. He had told himself not to read them each time, and he had read them each time anyway.

He opened the message without much curiosity. Namie was a good secretary but a poor information dealer. She couldn't do much more than compile links to various websites and blogs that he could've found by himself if he cared to look.

He saw the name at the end of her email before he saw its content proper; for a second his heart froze at _Mairu_ and not much more, before he thought to look up and see that Namie hadn't written him. She had forwarded him a message from his sister.

He did get rid of the message right then, mind already turned ahead and to the full deletion of this email address.

Whatever insults Mairu wanted to hurl at him, he didn't want to read them.

_You really can't follow the simplest instructions_ , he sent Namie. _I'll be getting rid of this account, so don't bother trying to contact me again._

He didn't let himself think about how much he would regret cutting Namie off, too. She wasn't of any use to him anyway. He was being sentimental, and that had felt nice, thinking that he mattered to her in the space of a phone call. Hearing his own name come out of the mouth of someone who knew him better than most people. He had humored her because he had been weak.

Namie replied almost instantly. _Read it_ , she said, with a copy of the same message from Mairu that he had just deleted.

So he did.

_Namie-san, how are you?_ it started. _Actually don't tell me, I don't care. I'm emailing you despite how much I abhor you to ask you to contact my useless brother and inform him that Kuru-nee is as of five hours ago missing. She was kidnapped! I'd find it cooler if it wasn't my precious sister whose whereabouts and status as living or dead or in-between I can't confirm. Apparently the person who took her was stronger than the Headless Rider and faster than her magic bike. No one knows where she is. I talked to every single unsavory person I know, and they're all useless. I thought, how about asking the most unsavory person of all for help? Tell him to hurry up and find her, please. And tell him I hate him, and if he doesn't find her, I'll torture his location out of every person he's ever breathed near to until_ I _find him and succeed where Shizuo-san failed. Maybe I'll even take Shizuo-san with me, to make extra sure that he's dead._

Izaya's thumb hovered over his screen. He couldn't do more than read the message a second time before Namie called.

_"Did you read it?"_ she asked as soon as he picked up. And then, when he didn't reply: _"I asked her if she could tell me anything more. Her little friend Kuronuma Aoba apparently estimates that eleven people have gone missing in weird circumstances in the past month."_

"People go missing in Tokyo all the time," Izaya said.

_"But how many kidnappers can outrun that headless freak?"_

None. Or at least no one human. Namie didn't need him to say it, though.

_"All the victims are people you know,"_ she added quietly. _"I have Kuronuma's list in front of me, along with the dates. They started by taking one-time clients of yours, then regulars, then work acquaintances. And now family."_

"You think I'm being targeted?"

_"It would make sense. It's not like you didn't leave any grudges behind. I'd be surprised if anyone you know_ doesn't _have a grudge of some sort against you. They must've found out that you're alive somehow."_

Izaya dragged his legs over the side of the bed to rest his feet on the floor. He crossed them at the ankle despite the aches working up his spine at the movement. "So I should head back directly into the trap laid out for me, then?"

Namie groaned in frustration. _"You coward,"_ she said, disgusted. _"You're just going to run away? To ignore your own family? What if they find out where you live anyway, wouldn't it be better to at least know who you're up against?"_

_I hate him_ , Mairu had written. She had never been short of expletives to describe how unlikable he was, how little she cared about him. Izaya couldn't remember a time when those words had left her mouth so genuinely, though.

It made his chest constrict as if air was missing.

"If I take care of this," he said quietly. "If I satisfy this lunacy of yours—going back to Ikebukuro, working with you again… will you be satisfied?"

_"No,"_ she replied bluntly. _"But at least it'll allow me to decide once and for all whether you're worth my time."_

"And if I'm not?"

She stayed silent for a moment. _"If you're not… then I'll cut you off from my life. I'll let you rot away as you damn well please. Don't you win either way like this?"_

Izaya looked up at the ceiling of the room he'd been occupying for a month now. It was as bleak as everything in this city was, as bleak as his entire life had been since the moment he had hung up on Shizuo after saying _Goodbye_.

"Fine," he said. His heartbeat sped up, strong enough to feel bruising, and the breath he let out when Namie started listing the trains he could take during the day felt as cold as it was liberating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long wait! Finals happened and shaved years off my lifespan, I'm still in the middle of trying to figure out what I'll do this summer and next year, and I'm terrible at keeping any sort of schedule. Hopefully you enjoyed this new chapter of Everyone Has Trauma, The Fanfiction.  
> Don't hesitate to drop me a nice word if you did! And reminder that you can find me on [Tumblr](http://izanyas.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](http://twitter.com/izanyas) as well as AO3.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: symptoms of PTSD (semi-graphic description of a panic attack and derealization + some unsanitary stuff), child kidnapping, Namie's ego.
> 
> Thank you as always to ScarletCake for the beta.

**Not Justice  
** **Chapter 6**

Izaya refused to go back to Tokyo as long as Namie herself wasn't already there to wait for him. Namie had expected it, had her brain rushing ahead and her fingers on the keyboard of her laptop by the time he hung up on her, trying to buy the quickest plane ticket to Narita that she could find.

It didn't matter how expensive it was. She still had access to one of Izaya's bank accounts, and what was left on it largely paid for the fee.

She left the same evening with not even a note behind herself. The woman at the entrance of the hotel she was staying at looked at her with wide eyes when she handed over her keys—for good—and all Namie felt at the sight was a burning sort of satisfaction. "You'd look better with short hair," she told her, breaking another of the rules she had set for herself by the time she reached fifteen years old.

She didn't compliment people who weren't Seiji. Especially not women.

The text she sent to Kishitani Shingen from the airport was to the point. _I quit_ , it said. Shingen tried to call her almost immediately, but Namie shuffled deeper inside the armchair of the first class resting lounge and turned off her phone entirely. The champagne she downed from the offered buffet was the best she had ever tasted.

She didn't retain much from the flight. She wasn't sick, and her ears didn't hurt like Seiji's had when they had traveled to America together almost two years ago. She grabbed a few fitful hours of sleep, her back aching despite the comfort of her seat and her dreams plagued by Izaya's voice and flashes of the city she was going to. The city she was returning to.

She didn't know if it felt like going home. She had never had a place to call home in the first place.

It took until her plane landed in Japan for her to realize that the weightlessness of her heart came from the fact that, for the first time in years, no one was after her. She wasn't in danger. Seiji was thousands of miles away, unaware of her departure, and the only thing waiting for her here was what she herself had brought. She had nothing to expect here but maybe answers to the void inside her—and already this gap was being bridged, already she could breathe like she hadn't in months. She was clean, and she was fed, and she had two suitcases with her full of belongings that she didn't have to hand over to anyone.

Her inbox was full when she turned on her phone once more. She deleted the Kishitanis' inquiries without reading them, opened Izaya's email to check what time his train would arrive in Narita—ten thirty—and finally, her thumb hovered over the single text she had received from Harima Mika.

There was a sense of finality in her when she opened it.

_Good luck_ , it read. And, like an afterthought, _Thank you_.

Namie's jaw was tense, her throat dry and hot. She felt no anger, though, and no regret.

Namie took a seat at a café inside the station and resolved to spend the next two hours waiting in silence, hands resolutely not shaking around the porcelain cup that a waiter brought her, stomach too knotted to eat the breakfast she had ordered with it. Her toast cooled down within a few minutes, the grease from the butter growing less appealing as it did. She ate half of an apple and the tiny piece of chocolate that went with the coffee. She felt tired but restless, and the caffeine helped with that, making it almost impossible for her to close her eyes or quiet her own heartbeat.

She told Izaya where exactly she was waiting thirty minutes before his train was scheduled to arrive. She couldn't see the tracks from inside the station, but she was right outside of where he should come up once the time came. Seeing posters written in her own language and hearing it spoken around her in the café hadn't been surprising at first; now, though, she found herself lending an ear to the other customers' murmurs and glancing at the ads plastered over the walls of the station.

She thought she must simply be too tense at first. The closer she got to the time of Izaya's arrival and the harder her heart beat against her ribcage, the more she felt her own clothes tighten around her as if to suffocate her—her bra was digging into her sides, making it hard to breathe. She was considering sneaking a hand under her shirt to unclasp it when her eyes glanced over one more movie poster.

_Hanejima Yuuhei_ , she thought. He was on it, looking no different than she remembered. Pretty but plain. Namie rubbed her forehead with tired fingers, a useless attempt at pushing away the headache she could feel coming; her eyes lowered to read the title of the movie, and her heart jumped in her chest before she could understand why.

There was a man standing next to the poster. He was too far away for her to see his features, and he was looking to his side anyway.

He had blond hair.

Her leg jerked under the table, making her empty cup and untouched plate rattle loudly. Namie barely remembered to drop a few bills onto it before she jumped out of her chair, dragging her suitcases behind her, walking toward the man with fury flowering inside her, tasting fire on her tongue.

There must be tens of thousands of men with blond hair in Tokyo and its vicinity. She knew that. And even as she got closer she couldn't see this one's face, and he was wearing very plain clothes too. But the build fit, and the atmosphere did too, and _Izaya's train would be here in less than five minutes_.

Heiwajima Shizuo barely managed to avoid the suitcase she threw at his legs. He turned his head in her direction right as she was reaching back, feet slipping on the floor as she tried to gain traction on it, and his side-step was done with a loud swear.

Namie's suitcase crashed into the wall, right under the Hanejima poster.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Heiwajima barked, veins turning dark in his face and hands flexing by his sides.

Namie was too tired to be afraid. "You are not going to ruin this for me," she hissed. " _Get out_."

"You just tried to _break my leg_ —"

Nami stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar before he could finish, and he looked bewildered, an expression she had never seen on his face in the few glimpses she had had of him in person before. "Get out!" she yelled, her spit probably flying into his face, she was so close. "I don't care if you beat me up later, just get out, _now_."

"Who the fuck are you?" Heiwajima took hold of her hands and ripped them off of him— _lifted_ her and pushed her away as if she weighed nothing at all. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't punch your face in!"

Namie's body was too tense on anger, red-hot and slimy inside her veins. She couldn't feel any more fear because she was already bursting with it. "It doesn't matter," she said. From the corner of her eyes, she saw a man in uniform approach them slowly. "Fuck. Heiwajima, you need to get out of here."

"Why should I?" he answered loudly. "Who are _you_?"

"Shit," Namie whispered, biting into her own lips. She had the taste of metal on her tongue when she ordered, "Tell that guy that everything's fine."

"You—"

" _Please_." She wasn't above begging. Not for this.

Ten-twenty-eight, the clock on the wall said.

Heiwajima looked at her—too long, too slow—and she thought she saw him physically reign in the violence visible in the line of his shoulders. He exhaled as though trying to expel it from his own lungs, he closed his eyes, and he rubbed a hand over his face. When he nodded to the man she could feel walking in their direction, he looked older than she had ever seen him.

"Explain yourself," he told her between his teeth.

But she couldn't. Not now. "There's no time," she replied—and her voice was shaking, she noticed, horrified—"Just do as I say. I'll give you my number, you can contact me later if you want, but I need you out of this station right now."

Heiwajima stared at her without moving. She knew that she must look frightful, deranged, out of her mind; she knew that her face was hot and her luggage spread around her on the floor and her hands twisting together; she knew how much her face was marked with the insomnia of the past year and how little she cared about masking this with makeup. "I'll contact you later," she said again. She tried to push him toward the exit, but he didn't bulge, not even one bit.

"Who are you?" he asked for the third time. She was staring at his chest—at the deceptively normal white shirt he wore, not unlike her own—both of her hands shaking against him. Trying to move him felt like trying to move a brick wall. "You obviously know who I am," he continued, getting rid of her grip on him once more.

So easily. As if he were batting away an annoying fly.

Ten-twenty-nine. Namie thought she could hear the train stop from where she was, its doors opening, its passengers getting out, Izaya among them.

"If you stay here," she said, throat tight, "you're going to provoke a fight."

Heiwajima's eyebrows twitched in irritation. "I haven't punched _you_ , have I?"

She almost wanted to laugh. "You won't be able to help it."

In the second that followed she saw Heiwajima's face change; the hostility seemed to bleed out of him and leave nothing behind but closed doors. "Ah," he said. His hand released her wrists. People crawled up the escalator that led out from the platform under their feet, and they both turned to look at them spilling out into the station, carrying luggage and holding children's hands.

"You're here for him too." Heiwajima's voice was heavy.

She couldn't look at him anymore.

They stood frozen in front of his brother's movie poster, Namie's suitcases still lying on the floor, gathering dirt. She felt tied up. Strangled. The hard plastic of her bra dug into her chest with every breath she took, painful and relentless; the lighting was too harsh now, making her blink away tears and leaving gray spots in her vision.

The doors to the elevator opened again. Namie and Heiwajima turned their heads to look at them with the same breath lodged in their throats, and, she thought, with the same apprehension.

Izaya wheeled himself out of the elevator's cage and right out in the open, his black hair shining blue under the electric lights, his face turned away to look at the old man standing beside him.

"Don't," she breathed.

Heiwajima kicked her suitcase out of his way and started walking.

 

* * *

 

Sozoro was _hovering_.

He looked like a bird of prey. Today wasn't the first time Izaya had had this thought, and it wouldn't be the last; Sozoro had eyes like an eagle's and talons to go with them too—knives hidden on his person, just like Izaya did.

Izaya hadn't had much use for his knives lately.

Sorozo, though, seemed to be having the time of his life. The closer their train got to Tokyo and the sharper the glee was on his face, and Izaya was too bored, or too tense, not to ask questions.

"It'll be interesting to see how you fare there," Sozoro answered him. "Somewhere you know, among people you know. People who know you."

"I don't intend to make my presence known."

Sozoro's eyes were glinting. "Plans don't always come to fruition," was all he said.

The train ride wasn't uncomfortable. Izaya had traveled light—most of his luggage would be transported at a later date if necessary. Because of Namie's insistence that he go to Tokyo within twenty-four hours of her call, he hadn't had much time to prepare. He had to get a prescription filled and book train tickets and pack. Even with Sozoro's help, this took time.

Now he was sitting between two wagons, in a space left free for the disabled, back against the soft train seat and legs extended onto his own wheelchair in front. His laptop was on his knees, but he wasn't doing anything with it other than watching the video Namie had sent him of the creature they called Snake Hands. Over and over. Hoping for his eyes to catch a new detail.

Izaya didn't know anything or anyone who could outrun the Black Rider. It made sense to suspect that someone—or something—he didn't know might have taken Kururi.

"You're hesitant," Sozoro commented.

Izaya tensed. He lifted his right thigh with his hands, so he could cross his legs at the knee in front of him. "I'm just tired."

"Your sister has been missing for more than thirty hours now," Sozoro continued evenly. "You know the chances of finding her alive are thin."

Izaya knew. He was no stranger to abductions.

He couldn't call anyone yet, though. Not as long as he was out of the city—and, his mind whispered, not as long as Namie wasn't there.

She texted him right then, telling him where she was waiting. Izaya put his phone back into his pocket without answering.

He would be with her soon enough.

The last few minutes of travel were spent in silence for the both of them. Sozoro hadn't sat down at all through the trip; he was holding a wall loosely so as not to lose his balance in case the train slowed suddenly. Every seat except for the one Izaya had taken was free, but he ignored them all.

Izaya had to resist uncrossing his legs and crossing them again. His spine was burning harder than usual as it was. He couldn't even tell if that was his imagination—most of the pain _was_ his imagination in the first place.

In the balance of all the painful days he'd had since waking up in the hospital, paralyzed from the waist down and both arms in casts, this one weighed toward the bad.

Izaya packed his laptop into his bag ten minutes before the train was scheduled to stop. He tugged his legs out of the wheelchair's seat and brought it closer to him. Then, after locking the breaks in place, he pushed himself onto it.

"You should've eaten before we left," Sozoro said, eyeing the way Izaya's arms shook under his weight.

"Too early to eat," Izaya replied between clenched teeth.

He let out a harsh breath once he was securely seated. His legs ached, but the worst of the pain was always at his lower back; as though someone had taken hold of his spine there and twisted their fist sideways. With a wave of his hand, Izaya ordered Sozoro to pick up his suitcase and push his backpack under the seat of the chair.

He ignored the doors opening around him. Other passengers were walking out of their assigned seats to wait near the door where he was; some of them marked a pause at the sight of him, one or two flicked their tongue in annoyance. Izaya leaned back in his seat and turned his head to look at them, lips stretching on amusement despite himself, despite everything.

"My apologies for blocking the way," he told them. "I'm in quite a bit of pain, so I'd like to hurry out."

The couple behind him seemed to deflate; soon enough, everyone in the vicinity was looking at them with animosity. Izaya entertained himself with the whispers for the last two minutes of the drive.

He barely felt the train slow and stop. The doors opened in front of him silently, the platform almost empty but for a few people come to wait directly on it; Namie would be upstairs, though, he knew.

Sozoro pushed down on the handles of the wheelchair so that its front would lift and allow to cross the small step separating Izaya from the edge of the quay.

Nothing around was especially different or stressful. Narita was a big station and a bigger airport; the chance of accidentally crossing paths with anyone he knew was small. Still Izaya felt his lungs fill with ice as he breathed, felt a tell-tale pain in his chest that he knew would soon enough be lodged in his forehead and his throat. Sozoro handed him the small pill pouch from his bag wordlessly as they waited by the elevator.

For once, Izaya didn't rue Sozoro's foresight. He didn't pretend that everything was fine. He popped an anti-emetic tablet into his mouth and swallowed it dry.

"There's nothing for you to throw up," Sozoro murmured.

"I'd rather not be nauseous at all. It's a pain to get rid of."

Sozoro didn't mention the chest pain. Izaya had pills for that, too; but Izaya would die before he admitted to needing those.

The line for the elevator was almost empty now. People kept throwing curious glances at Izaya, offering to let him go first, and Izaya smiled and waved them off. He wanted to avoid as much as the crowd as he could before meeting Namie. Finally, it was only him, Sozoro, and his luggage. The train that had driven them here had already left the platform. Izaya pushed himself into the elevator manually despite the strain on his back and let out a sigh once the doors closed.

"You're going to have a grand old time here," he told Sozoro, looking at the ceiling.

"Indeed."

Izaya chuckled. "I could introduce you to quite a few skilled fighters. One of them a former classmate of mine. She'd be delighted to take on a specialist, her usual sparring partners are mostly comprised of children."

"I'll make sure not to hit too hard," Sozoro drawled, and Izaya laughed brightly.

"Oh, I wouldn't underestimate her if I were you." The elevator stopped. A bell rang, softly, and as Izaya turned his head to look over his shoulder and into Sozoro's dark eyes, the doors started opening. "As I said, though, I don't plan on making myself—"

He choked. His mouth stayed open for a timeless second, voice gone from him; the pain in his chest disappeared entirely under the cold air that filled his lungs, thick, heavy, till they were so full of ice that he couldn't breathe at all.

He barely heard Sozoro ask, _Izaya-dono?_ with something akin to surprise on his voice. Izaya whipped his head around to look at the crowd walking through the station, and as he did, it parted in front of him neatly, people pressing backwards to make way for the man walking in his direction.

Shizuo's eyes met his in less than a second, hooked them in and made it impossible for Izaya to look away. And it didn't matter that his eyesight blurred almost instantly or that he could feel blood rush to his head painfully, begging him to breathe again—Shizuo's face fit itself into the hole in Izaya's mind as neatly as if it had only been a day since he has last smelled murder off of the other's body and felt all the bones in his arms _snap_.

Shizuo stopped in front of Izaya, both of his feet hitting the ground like earthquakes; he never paid any mind to the way Sozoro moved, wrapping a hand around his wrist and no doubt pressing a blade against the blue veins there. " _Izaya_ ," he said, and the word shook through Izaya like that metal beam had twenty months prior. Painting his entire back blue and purple from the shock; twisting his spine, halting his steps.

Izaya rasped in a breath when Sozoro's blade started pushing into Shizuo's skin. He didn't check to see if the man had managed to draw blood. He couldn't look away from Shizuo's face.

"It's no use," he tried—he clenched his teeth so the shaking would _stop_. "Sozoro-san," he continued, louder. "You won't be able to stop him."

He could feel the incredulous glance Sozoro gave him. But the man obeyed, bound by contract and no doubt encouraged by his own dislike of Izaya—and Shizuo took another step forward, raising the hand—ah, the hand that Sozoro had grabbed, and indeed it was bleeding from a tiny cut at the wrist, already staining Shizuo's shirt sleeve crimson.

When he grabbed Izaya by the collar, the stain spread over it.

"Izaya," Shizuo growled again.

Izaya smiled, and tasted bile on his tongue as he did. "Shizuo. Long time no see."

There was no pain anymore. His entire body felt electric instead. In the pit of his stomach, heat spread, familiar and forgotten at once—but this time there was something blocking it, something that made Izaya want to scream instead of laugh and trapped all of his voice in at the same time.

It was fear. Worse than he felt even waking up from nightmares, swimming in his own sweat, thighs wet with his own piss.

Shizuo's face hadn't changed. Through the white haze Izaya saw the same nose and eyes and mouth, saw the dark roots of Shizuo's sloppily-dyed hair, saw the white teeth in his mouth as he opened it to speak again.

Except—something happened. There was a shock, enough to make even Shizuo falter slightly. Izaya's now blood-stained collar slipped out of his grip, and Shizuo broke away from his eyes to look behind himself. Izaya did the same with a scream stuck in his throat.

A suitcase fell to the floor, probably after hitting Shizuo's back. When Izaya looked up from it he saw Namie, almost comical in her fury; her arm was still extended forward after throwing it, and her face was a vibrant red.

Izaya let out the ugliest laugh, shoulders shaking and making the fabric of his clothes drag against the slick sweat at his back. "And Namie-san," he declared shakily. "My, what a reunion."

"Will you fucking _leave me alone_ ," Shizuo snapped in her direction, but all Namie did was attempt to kick him in the thigh.

"Fuck off, Heiwajima. Just—fuck you, fuck everything about you."

They glared at each other, violence gleaming at Namie's throat and straining the lines of Shizuo's back—and Sozoro stepped forward again.

"If I may—"

" _Shut up_ ," they told him, at the exact same time.

Izaya couldn't help it; he laughed again, belly aching on it, chest shaking, heart bruising his throat; it was loud enough to attract the attention of two people wearing the station's uniform and make them walk toward him in hurry.

Izaya shook a tranquil hand in their direction. The laughter had made the cold dissipate and the pain come back tenfold. "Let's take this elsewhere," he declared, leaning back into the chair.

Namie tried to walk in his direction, but Shizuo grabbed her by the shoulder to stop her. "No," he told Izaya—Izaya's stomach tightened at the sound. "I'm not fucking following you anywhere. You sit there and listen to me."

"I can't exactly run away, Shizuo."

There wasn't a hint of pity on Shizuo's face when he looked at the armchair. "Do you _want_ me to kill you?"

And Izaya should have expected that, really; but he found that the smile left his lips as violently as it had appeared, leaving his entire face numb in its wake.

Something changed on Shizuo's face as well. Both of his hands turned to fists by his sides as he breathed—Izaya's eyes zeroed in on them, helplessly—but all he did was put them into the pockets of his jeans.

"Are you here for Kururi?" he asked lowly.

Izaya licked his bottom lip. "Did Namie tell you I'd be here?"

"I did _not_ ," Namie exclaimed, still red with rage—but it was Shizuo whom Izaya was looking at. The hatred in his eyes was not as vibrant as it was in his memories. He said, plain and honest: "I knew you were coming back. The city stank." After a breath, he added: "Been hanging around here since yesterday, just in case."

Izaya raised a trembling hand to his lips and wiped the sweat off from under his nose. "Mmh."

"Mairu is losing her shit. She asked me to help—but I don't have any fucking clue where Kururi is. Do you?"

Izaya said nothing. The white around him was worse than it had been a minute ago; he was having trouble focusing on anything, but despite even this, his entire body tensed as Shizuo approached.

" _Do you_?" he repeated, hunched forward so that Izaya was only a couple inches under him. "Do you have anything to do with those fucking kidnappings, Izaya?"

"No," Sozoro answered for him. He stepped in front of Shizuo; Izaya usually disliked this sort of behavior from anyone, but this time, he felt grateful. "Izaya-dono came back at his sister's request. I'm sure he'll do his utmost to find her." Sozoro's voice was dripping with sarcasm.

Shizuo didn't seem to catch it, but it didn't matter, because he knew Izaya better than any of the people here anyway. "Are you here for her?" he asked again.

"You already got your answer," Izaya muttered. He had to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand again—his face was clammy. He felt cold all over. Breathing caused the same ache in his chest that drowning would.

Shizuo pushed Sozoro away with only the strength of his wrist—if he had been in any state to, Izaya would've laughed again at the face Sozoro made. "I didn't get any answers." He put both of his hands on the armrests of Izaya's chairs, and Izaya pulled his own arms back in his lap, whip-fast.

"Why are you here, Izaya?" Shizuo asked, this time right into his face.

And Izaya had prepared lies for this; he had been still in bed all night, stomach twisting, waking up from hazy nightmares of fire-lit rooftops and a headless woman descending from heavens on stairs made of shadows; he had told himself, over and over, that coming back meant nothing to him.

He found himself telling the truth. "I'm here for the same reason I do anything," he said. "Because I'm interested, Shizu-chan."

Shizuo didn't react to the nickname. Izaya stared into the eye of the storm, the rest of the station completely gone from his mind. Voices and footsteps erased, walls painted white by his mind struggling against unconsciousness.

He realized that he was hyperventilating.

Shizuo seemed to drag all the air with him when he drew back. His steps were the only thing Izaya heard and his body the only thing he saw.

He looked like a creature from a book. Like a giant at the foot of a bridge.

"Fine," Shizuo said. Izaya blinked, and didn't see anything anymore. " _Fine_. I don't give a shit. Just find Kururi."

Izaya breathed a half-laugh, half-sob out. "There's no certainty that I can do that."

"Then you're even more rotten than I thought." As Izaya blinked in his general direction, Shizuo added, "Find her and get out of here for good, or this time I'll kill you for real."

"That's the plan," Izaya grit out. He heard Shizuo's footstep distance themselves from him, almost breaking out of the liminal space that fate or trauma or both had opened for them; before he could, Izaya asked, "Did you think you'd killed me?"

Shizuo stopped.

The silence was absolute, now. White and endless. Izaya thought he wouldn't have been able to notice someone touching him.

"Yeah," Shizuo said from far away. "Yeah, I thought I did."

Izaya smiled. "There I guess there's reason for you to celebrate after all. You didn't kill me." He leaned back into the shapeless space where his chair should be. "You didn't give me what I wanted."

The space broke, allowing in the white lights of the station and Namie's still-pink face in front of him. Izaya couldn't see Shizuo anywhere.

"I think I'll be passing out now," he informed Sozoro. "Namie will help you with directions."

He barely felt Namie's hand on his arm and the vicious words she threw at him in answer. The fog covered his brain and drew his eyelids shut, and with the last of his awareness he brought a hand to his collar and touched the wet, warm stain.

It was fitting, in a way. Stepping back into Ikebukuro with Shizuo's blood at his throat.

 

* * *

 

Kururi opened her eyes to a hospital-like room.

She had never had to go to a hospital herself. Neither had Mairu. Her mom had always said that she and her sister were healthier than anyone she knew—never got worse than cut knees or bruised eyes, even with Mairu's training at the dojo. She used to compare them to Izaya, because Izaya got sick often, according to her. Flu after flu, cold after cold. Perpetually underweight. Always an insomniac.

Kururi couldn't ever remember seeing her brother sick. Or at least not in the physical way. It might have been before, though; before the time she started to look at Izaya, before she realized that there was a fifth member to their family that she ought to get to know.

The ceiling was bare and grey. Dirty. _Not a hospital_ , she thought faintly. Hospitals must look better on TV than they did in real life, she knew, but she didn't think one would look quite this bad.

Not a legal one, at least.

Kururi let her head fall sideways on the pillow. She was lying on a low bed, almost to floor-level. Other beds were in the room, with other people in them. There was a plastic pole next to her holding a transparent bag of… something. A tube went out of it, dropping down to her level, up to the crook of her elbow where a needle was stuck into her skin.

She tried to move, but found that she couldn't.

_Mairu_ , she thought.

She felt as though she had slept for a very long time. The memories of being grabbed by the middle and lifted off the Black Rider's bike came to her sluggishly. Like trying to remember a dream.

Had Mairu been taken too?

She couldn't hear any voices. The people she _could_ see next to her all seemed to be asleep or at least drugged, like she had been.

Her heart almost jumped out of her chest when something touched her face, but she couldn't move away from it. A hand grabbed her by the chin gently and made her turn her head back.

"There's only so long we can make a child sleep," the woman above her said.

She had a red coat on. At first, that was her most distinguishable trait. Kururi blinked forcefully, until she could see enough to make out the woman's features. She was pretty. Light-colored hair held up above her nape, warm skin and soft fingers against Kururi's cheek, wide eyes. Kururi couldn't guess her age. She smelled of flowers and smoke.

Her eyes were yellow.

The woman patted Kururi's hair briefly. "Don't panic," she said. "Though, I guess that's a little useless. You seem pretty calm already."

Kururi opened her mouth, forced her voice to come out. "M-Mairu…"

"Your sister's safe. I only need one of you, after all." She had a melodious voice, every word singing itself out of her. It might have been because of the drugs, but when she carded her hand through Kururi's hair once more, Kururi relaxed into it. "You really are family," the woman murmured. "He wasn't anxious in the least when I caught him either."

_What do you mean?_ Kururi wanted to ask. But the woman fiddled with something on the pole, and already the room was blurring into black around her. Already all that Kururi could make out was the deep red of the woman's coat—and the bright glow of her inhuman eyes.

"Shh," the woman said. "Your brother is full of lies. Even back then, he made sure to protect you from me." Kururi opened her mouth silently; the woman patted her shoulder and stood up, her face disappearing into the dark.

"He'll come," she said. "Even if he doesn't care about his family."

Her eyes flashed, burning bright spots into Kururi's sight every time she closed her eyes; and Kururi saw the woman raise one of her soft hands and examine the sharp, gleaming claws protruding out her fingertips.

"He'll be too curious not to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My God I had to rewrite half of this chapter twice before I was satisfied. Anyway! Look! They met! And they didn't attack each other! That's progress, right? I can just write them making out and crying now, right? (No I can't.)  
> Thank you so much for all your sweet comments and please never hesitate to leave more. The monster (me) hungers for positive reinforcement.


	7. Chapter 7

**Not Justice  
** **Chapter 7**

Shiki was tired.

He wasn't the kind of man to use the word lightly. His job and activities, whether they be monitoring the gallery or the less upstanding trades and negotiations he was a part of, required a great deal of energy. His strength since the very start had been that he was undefeated by fatigue; Mikiya called him inhuman, Akabayashi called him ruthless, Aozaki had stopped watching for him to give in and show weakness a long time ago. Shiki never minded the job and never minded the watching.

The situation was a bit special, however. As machine-like as he liked to appear, a friend's disappearance was still a friend's disappearance. With every new morning he expected Kine's body to show belly-up in the bay or abandoned at the gallery's glass doors with blood crusted at the mouth. The Black Rider texted him every evening with a glaring lack of update and an apology, and Shiki smoked more than he liked to, just to abate the nerves keeping him awake at night as he wondered why Kine was still gone.

He could only think of a few reasons why someone would take Kine. One was vengeance against the man himself—he was a private detective, and ties to Awakusu non-withstanding, someone who made enemies as a professional hazard. Another was vengeance against Awakusu, but then, why keep the body? There was no point to be made in secrecy.

The last was ransom, and no one had asked for anything. Not for Kine, and not for any of the other people that Shiki had soon learned were being taken in similar circumstances.

He had a folder full of the names of the gone, now. It sat open on the low table in front of him, stained with ashes and half-buried in the shadow of Akabayashi's body.

Which brought him to the second reason he felt the necessity to admit to fatigue.

"You'll hurt yourself with that," Akabayashi said, in that murmur of a voice that should sound over-the-top to any of them but which only served to cool the atmosphere of the room.

They all knew that the weight of Akabayashi's posturing was very real.

Kazamoto's grip tightened on his blade. Already a few inches of the sword were unsheathed and gleaming cold and blue in the light. "Want to test that,  _Akabayashi_?"

Aozaki wasn't here to put a leash on his dog, so of course, Kazamoto had taken up the role of antagonizing them all with sheer delight. Shiki sucked in the very last of his cigarette's worth, until the foul taste of burning plastic coated his tongue and he was forced to crush the filter into the dirty ashtray next to him.

Any other day of the week he could've dealt with his colleagues' antics. Not today.

"Kazamoto," he said lowly. The man perked up, throwing him a glance. "Get out."

Akabayashi let out a pleased sound, which made Kazamoto's face redden with anger the way the excitement of a fight hadn't. He seemed to hesitate for a second, looking between the two of them and wondering if it was worth disobeying the orders of someone who technically couldn't order him, but who had the sort of backing that he lacked.

With a disgusted click of his tongue, he left.

Shiki's phone chose this moment to ring, which suited him, because now Akabayashi was looking at him with curiosity in his eyes, and Shiki didn't have the energy to deal with  _that_.

"Shiki," he said curtly, shoving the phone against his ear.

He heard nothing in answer except for static.

Akabayashi, still watching him, gestured with his hand in askance. Shiki's lips thinned. He was about to either speak again or hang up when he heard breathing, and then,  _"I heard you lost Kine, Shiki-san."_

Shiki stilled, blood turned to ice and muscles to rock.

He didn't know what face Akabayashi made at his reaction, because he didn't think he could have seen anything and understood it in that very moment.

"Orihara," he said. He couldn't tell what sort of voice had left his lips.

Akabayashi's body went immobile atop the armrest of the couch.

_"It's been a while,"_  Orihara said, playful and  _alive_ ,  _"You should think about changing your number from time to time. You've had the same since I've known you. Not terribly careful of you."_

It took a second too long for Shiki to be able to answer. "You should be thankful I haven't," he managed, and he could only hope that the distance and distortion would be enough to mask the heavy emotion in his voice to Orihara himself, because Akabayashi was missing none of it.

_"I suppose so. I'd spend more time on catching up, but we're a little short on time, wouldn't you say?"_

"When did you come back?" Shiki asked nonchalantly. As nonchalantly as he could.

_"Just this morning. I would've called earlier, but I ran into some trouble on my way."_

He wanted to ask. He  _really_  wanted to ask. He wanted to know where Orihara had gone and why he had come back, wanted to ask to see him for no reason but to neaten the memory of his face and of the full scope of his voice and smile—but Akabayashi was staring at him, anchoring the situation to reality rather than some far-off dream Shiki could've had, must've had, over the last year and a half.

His wits were returning to him now. The ache in his neck, the weakness in his legs. Shiki uncrossed them and didn't wince as pain flared under his right thigh from an old pulled muscle that had never really mended. He cleared his throat.

"I suppose there's something you want, then," he said.

_"There is,"_  Orihara agreed.  _"You must know that Kine is only one in a string of missing people."_

Shiki flicked a glance to the files spread over the coffee table. "I do."

_"The latest of them is my sister."_

This time he leaned forward, rummaging through the papers. He found Orihara Kururi's face inside; she stood squeezed between— _Mairu_ , he read over the associated file, who couldn't be anyone but her sister indeed, and a boy with blue hair that he knew from Akabayashi's tight-lipped musings.

"I hadn't realized that she was your sister," he said lowly.

_"Orihara isn't an uncommon family name, and we don't look much like each other,"_  Orihara said, sounding bored.

Shiki disagreed. The selfie was recent—taken a week before the girl disappeared—and if anything he was wondering how he hadn't made the connection beforehand. Orihara Kururi looked something like her brother had the first time they had met. The hair color was wrong and the shape of her face softer—younger—but the resemblance was striking now that he was looking for it.

She'd been missing for almost two days.

"None of them have reappeared anywhere, either dead or alive," he said, because he didn't know what else to say. He didn't know if Orihara would want or accept anything more than this. "She's probably alive."

Orihara, it turned out, ignored his words.  _"I've been asked to help look for them,"_  he said briskly, and God, Shiki hadn't realized how much he wanted to hear his voice until he had it pressed against his ear. His longing to meet face-to-face with Orihara again was ridiculous. His mouth didn't shake only because Akabayashi was watching.

He looked at the faces of the missing again, trying to regain his focus.

"I've asked for the Headless Rider's help with finding Kine," he said, doing his best to ignore the weight of Akabayashi's eyes. "So far she hasn't found anything."

_"Neither has my secretary. This is a strange case, isn't it?"_  Orihara let out a huff, something close to laughter but a little less controlled than Shiki remembered it.  _"I've heard of a few other strange things happening here since I've been gone."_

That answered a question Shiki had been asking himself, then. "So you're not involved with that Snake Hands… whatever it is."

_"I'm afraid not. I never planned to involve myself with Ikebukuro again."_

Shiki didn't linger on the sting he felt at those words. "There's nothing I can tell you about those kidnappings," he said. "Except for what the courier told me, which I'm sure you already know."

_"I've heard some accounts,"_  Orihara replied vaguely.  _"Well, either way, thank you, Shiki-san. I wasn't expecting more than to let you know I'm working on this. Let's stay in touch while I'm in town. Hopefully we can both find who we're looking for."_

"Do you think it was them? Snake Hands," he added for clarity.

He didn't think it was, but he didn't want the call to end just yet.  _While I'm in town_  sounded too much like Orihara planned to disappear again, gone like a wisp of wind.

_"The only thing I know,"_  Orihara replied,  _"is that whatever took Kururi wasn't human."_

There was fear in his voice, mixed in with the loathing.

"Orihara," Shiki breathed. Damn Akabayashi. "I'm glad you're alive."

He wasn't surprised when only the flat tone of a cut call answered him.

For a moment longer he kept the phone against the side of his face, as if to keep the sound of the man's voice stuck there. Eventually he let it slide against his neck and put it back in his jacket.

"So," Akabayashi murmured, interest burning bright on his tongue. "Things are looking up for you, Shiki-no-danna."

Shiki met his eyes levelly.

 

* * *

 

The whole apartment was dusty. Izaya had snapped out of the weird dozing-on-and-off sleep he'd fallen into at the station up by the time they reached it. Namie spent the way resenting the tone with which Sozoro, as he'd introduced himself, told her not to wake him.

She wasn't  _stupid_.

She hadn't cared to tidy up the place when she had left, so long ago now. Izaya's things were still spread across the wide living-room, laptop screens invisible through the layers of dust, windows dirtied on the inside even if clean outside. Put in stasis until he returned. The air was stuffy, unbreathable, with a stench that told her with no words that something had been left to rot in the fridge.

Izaya didn't seem to care much. He made a face when everything he touched clung grey to his fingers, but he chased off Sozoro's grip on his chair to wheel himself near the windows and take out his phone. He didn't address more than a look to Namie herself before he was speaking, lowly, into it. His long fingers tapping softly against the armrest.

Sozoro took a laptop out of the bag he was carrying. "I'll arrange for cleaning," he told Namie.

"I can do that," she replied, annoyed for reasons she didn't know.

The only thing she got in answer was an irritating twist of his lips.

Izaya's call didn't last long, but he was hunched over his contact list before Namie could put in a word, still not looking at her, mouth opening only when whoever was on the other side of the line answered.

He did this for most of the day. Barely an hour in two women rang at the door, carrying cleaning supplies and dressed mostly in white, and Sozoro let them in with an agreeable smile. They started cleaning up the place and emptying what needed emptying, gently asking Namie to move when she was in their way, making rage swarm inside her until her throat was stiff with it.

There was nothing to be done, though. She sat down once one of the couches was usable, took out her own laptop and stared at the screen without knowing what to do. Izaya's Wi-Fi was still running, and the device connected itself to it with no need for her to input the password again. Her inbox was full of messages from Shingen and Emilia, which she ignored.

Seiji had sent her a message to. She stared at it for a long time without understanding why it was there, before she remembered—she hadn't told him she was leaving.

He wanted to know where she had gone.

Not so long ago she would've relished in the sight of it, in the mere concept of Seiji contacting her on his own for nothing more than to know where she was. No messes to clean up or half-dead bodies to hide. Now all Namie felt was the tightness in her chest, regret and shame and something more vulnerable and childish. She closed her laptop with shaking hands.

Izaya was done making calls.

She walked toward him slowly. Sozoro was in the kitchen with the cleaning staff, maybe making a list of things to buy to keep himself and Izaya fed, acting the part of some sort of an outdated butler. Namie stood next to Izaya and watched his face intently as he raised his eyes from the phone in his lap to take in the sights of the city. The sunlit sky was kind on his face; it soothed the imprint of sleeplessness where the station's harsh lights had exposed it like a raw wound; it burned in his black hair with a hint of red, made his skin look healthier.

"You look like crap," she said.

He looked at her tiredly. "Pot, kettle."

She couldn't help the stretch of her lips at that any more than he could his.

"I told your sister you were back," she said then, and the light fluttering of a smile on his lips died down promptly. "I don't think she wants to subject herself to your company, don't worry."

"No," he replied. "I don't think she does either."

It almost made her want to tell him how mistaken he was in his assumption of Mairu and Kururi, but she refrained. She didn't want to be subjected to assumptions about herself and Seiji in return.

The simmer of anger inside her quieted as they watched the city side by side. Namie felt no kinship with Tokyo, no burst of love or rage for the city itself. If anything she had felt more emotion stepping into the stifling air of the apartment than she had landing in Narita. Izaya was different. There was nothing to be seen on his face as he observed the comings and goings of bug-sized people in the streets below, but he must be feeling something.

Anxiety, if nothing else, she thought. She hadn't spent too long thinking of what she knew of his physical and mental state now, but, well. Heiwajima's presence earlier had given that away. Perhaps it would've surprised others—Kishitani's son, or the Dullahan—to see him demonstrate such textbook suffering. Choking on his own lungs and passing out from the panic. Heiwajima himself had barely seemed to notice in his fury. But it hadn't surprised her.

She'd never seen Izaya as anything more than pathetically human.

"I need to work," he said in the heavy silence.

She nodded. "All right. I'll let you delay talking to me until you find your sister." The look he gave her was a warning; she smiled in answer, satisfaction rumbling in her belly, foul and comforting. "Don't think I'll let you escape feeling every bit as uncomfortable as I feel, Izaya."

"You're so cruel, Namie-san," he sighed, leaning back with a flourish. "And here I thought the sight of my person would be enough to deter you from… whatever it is you're trying to do."

"I  _did_  forget how unsightly you are. Physically and otherwise."

"Does the wheelchair make it worse?" he teased, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes.

She laughed, humor as nasty on her tongue as sugar. "Somehow, it suits you."

It was even true. The thing looked nothing short of a throne with the way Izaya sprawled in it.

Izaya's amusement cooled after that. The way he turned his head to look at her had a sort of finality to it, and Namie tensed, knowing that she wouldn't like whatever was about to come out of his mouth.

"Namie-san—"

"Drop the honorific," she cut in.

He startled, eyebrows raised. Namie's hand clenched around the hold she had on her opposing elbow, fingers pressing against bone through the soft of her shirt, and she steeled herself for the poison he was sure to deliver in answer.

She never knew what he would've said—perhaps neither of them did—because someone knocked on the front door right as Izaya opened his mouth.

 

* * *

 

Mikado wasn't trying to collect information. What he got out of Aoba on a good day was enough to satiate the part of him that he thought would always crave more than what he had; meeting far-eyed Mizuchi Yahiro, seeing the scars on his hands and the videos taken of him fighting Heiwajima Shizuo and leveling a whole group in one night, had also soothed him. Mikado contented himself with talking to the boy and talking to Aoba. He filled himself with the stories Anri told of her rare clients and Masaomi of his travels to find things for her to sell. School occupied the rest of his time.

Maybe pushing Mizuchi forward had been a bad idea. But seeing Izaya's name on the boy's phone and a glimpse of their conversation… he couldn't have resisted if his life depended on it. Aoba hating him was an unfortunate outcome, but not one he regretted entirely.

He didn't think Aoba could stay away from him for long anyway.

Now, however, and despite his best attitude, there was a piece of information at the front of his thoughts that he didn't know what to do with; and with it, the echo of a rumor online, of Heiwajima Shizuo making a ruckus at Narita train station this morning in a way that had become uncharacteristic for a year and a half. Putting the pieces together was any fool's job, he thought.

Mikado had never actually gone to see Izaya in person. He had the man's business card, old as it was. He had kept it in his wallet ever since he'd met the man for the first time. It held an address and phone number; the phone number had been dead, so.

Address it was.

He walked the way from the underground station on jittery legs. Shinjuku was less busy with activity during working hours, but more people were outside because of the warm fall sun. The building he found at the address was nondescript enough, if a bit on the expensive side, he mused, eyeing the tall glass windows on the uppermost floors. He entered the lobby with no need for a code. A guardian was there, sweeping the floor, and when Mikado asked her, she said, "Saw him get back this morning. Wonder where he was all this time." Then, in a curious-suspicious voice: "He's in a  _wheelchair_  now."

Mikado didn't know what to make of that except try and calm the shaking of his hands.

_He's really back_.

The person who opened the door to him was an old man with gentle features; his eyes swept over Mikado's body with the intensity of an x-ray machine for a few seconds too long before he stepped aside to allow him entrance.

"You've got a visitor, Izaya-dono," he called lightly.

Mikado stepped into a wide-lit living room that smelled a little strongly of detergent and lemon; he found Izaya sitting by the window, his face struck dumb by surprise, open-mouthed and, as always, striking.

And then he glanced sideways and met the furious eyes of Yagiri Namie.

" _You_ ," she spat out, and Mikado tensed all the way to his nape, swallowing nervously. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I—er," Mikado said. He looked back at Izaya before he could help it. "Is this a bad time?"

Izaya was still looking at him as if he'd seen a ghost, which did nothing to appease the surge of  _wonder_  in Mikado. Eventually he regained his countenance, because his lips thinned into a white line and his gaze became sharper, and Mikado felt all of a sudden as if he were fifteen and standing in front of a helpful stranger. Masaomi tense as a bow beside him, the light of midday shining in Izaya's hair and on the young, amused lines of his face.

"Mikado-kun," he said lowly—Mikado swallowed again, for the shiver than ran up his spine, joy or fear or something similar.

"Ah, I really hope I'm not interrupting," Mikado answered. His voice was shaking, but there was nothing to be done about it.

He looked between Izaya and Yagiri hesitantly; Yagiri was glaring murder at him, arms crossed in front of her chest. She looked more disheveled than he remembered her to be. The shirt she wore was rumpled, her hair in disarray. Her eyes sunk deep and the skin around them bruised.

"I don't know how many more surprises I can deal with today," Izaya muttered almost inaudibly.

It made Yagiri snort.

"Sorry," Mikado tried again. "I just… heard that there was an altercation with Shizuo-san this morning—" he saw the line of their shoulders tense, Yagiri's face growing even darker, and he hurried to add, "and, with what I've heard of the situation… I thought you might be here, Izaya-san."

Izaya examined him for a moment. Mikado tried not to shuffle on his feet and to ignore the glee tensing his stomach into inextricable knots, almost more potent than nausea. Behind him the old man was moving, his steps light onto the wooden floor, and he made no comment at all.

Finally, Izaya exhaled. He leaned back into the wheelchair—which Mikado was only now noticing. His forehead was still marred by a single line of tension, but when he spoke, his voice was even. "What do you want, Mikado-kun? I'm a little busy."

"I heard about your sister," Mikado said too fast, and watched attentively for a sign of anything on Izaya's face. He didn't find it. "And… I knew Mizuchi-kun was trying to contact you, so…"

Izaya's attention sparked at this, and Yagiri's as well. "Mizuchi Yahiro?" he asked.

Mikado nodded, nerves alight. He pushed his glasses up his nose. "He's my junior at Raira."

Izaya and Yagiri exchanged a look.

"Anyway." The scars on Mikado's torso were starting to ache, a stretching sort of burn, as they always did when he stood for too long. "I've come across something… I'm not sure how useful it'll be, but, it's come up a few times. Maybe it'll be useful in finding her."

"Are you offering me information?" Izaya's smile was sharp enough to cut.

Mikado blushed. "Sort of?"

"Are you for real?" Yagiri commented, disgust evident on her voice. "Do you still not realize—"

Izaya raised a hand in her direction, and she shut up with a snarl. "I'm simply wondering, Mikado-kun," he said. His voice dragged softly over the words in a way that used to make Mikado's face warm and still now threatened to. "Why would you offer information to the person who ruined your life?"

"Izaya," Yagiri seethed.

"You didn't ruin my life," Mikado said, blinking. Yagiri shot him a white-hot glare, but he paid her no mind. "I think I mostly did that by myself."

"Maybe," Izaya replied. He dragged a leg up, crossing it over the other, some flicker of discomfort running over his face as he did and disappearing just as fast. "What of Kida-kun's life, then?"

Mikado couldn't help the downward twist of his mouth. "I…"

"I'm sure you know by now," Izaya continued. "Saki has never minded talking. If he didn't tell you, then she must have." His smile was cold. "Or are they still in exile together, afraid I'll come running?"

He laughed loudly at his own joke, and Mikado stood there awkwardly, not knowing how to react. Should he laugh too? He didn't think it was appropriate, considering the wheelchair.

Thankfully, Yagiri seemed to have reached her maximum tolerance for humor, because she snapped her fingers into Izaya's face. He jumped in his seat, breath catching; for a second his face seemed lost between joy and utter disbelief, and then he looked at her with a frown.

Mikado cleared his throat. "Masaomi is… dealing. I think. He's not back, no." He gave a shaky smile. "Actually, this is also part of the reason I'm here."

"I don't have time to deal with any more of Kida-kun's troubles," Izaya said.

"Not even when you caused all of them?" Mikado asked.

"Not even then." Izaya looked amused but bored.

The fact that Mikado felt no more animosity for the man after this admission must reflect poorly on him as a person, he thought vaguely. "Well, I'm still going to tell you what I know."

"You're an idiot," Yagiri muttered.

"Now, Namie," Izaya said without looking at her. "You heard him. He doesn't think I ruined his life."

She chuckled dryly. "Sure. How are the stab wounds, Ryuugamine?" she asked snidely.

Mikado's chest flared with pain as if to answer her. "I could tell you something else if you don't believe me," he said quickly. "What I have is only a name—a nickname, even, not a full name or anything—it's just." He swallowed. "It came up in Aoba-kun's own search. I don't think he would want me to tell you that."

"Oh, I'm sure," Izaya drawled.

"But if it's not enough…" Mikado paused. That was the part he wasn't too sure about, but if it ended up giving him what he wanted, he was willing to make the sacrifice.

He looked up at Izaya again. "You've heard of Snake Hands, right?" he asked. When Izaya nodded, he continued: "I could tell you who it is."

There was interest there, he thought, looking at the handsome lines of Izaya's face, the flutter of excitement at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were almost cutting. He didn't know who Mizuchi was yet, then. That was good. It gave Mikado some advantage.

"You've been busy," Izaya said airily. "Planning on taking up my mantle?"

Mikado blushed furiously. "No! I'm staying out of all of this—"

Izaya laughed again, bright and curt. "Of course you are," he said in good humor. "Still, giving me twice the amount for nothing in return? Your flair for business is terrible, Mikado-kun."

"It's not business," Mikado muttered, face still warm. "And it isn't for nothing either. I just need you here for a while."

"What for?"

"To draw Masaomi back."

Izaya was silent.

Mikado licked his lips, and worried the bottom one with his teeth for a second, latching onto the bitten-raw skin there. "He'll come back if you're here," he continued. "Because he's terrified of you, and he thinks I'm ready to follow you everywhere and let you spin me around like a toy or something."

"Good thing he doesn't know about your attempt at making  _me_  follow you," Izaya said quietly, and Mikado's face flushed once more, though the man's tone wasn't mocking. "I'm not going to contact him," Izaya went on with no hesitation. "Or any of your little friends."

"You don't need to," Mikado urged. "The news of you being here—alive—he'll know soon enough."

The old man's voice rang behind him, making all three of them jump: "Too bad for your plans of staying unnoticed, Izaya-dono."

Izaya was looking up in annoyance now, fingers tightening over the armrest of the chair.

"Did you really think no one would notice you being back?" Mikado asked after a second of stupor. "I know some people were expecting it."

"Is that the idea behind all of this?" Izaya replied, irritated. "A bunch of teenagers bullying me into dealing with their issues?"

"Serves you right," Yagiri commented.

"You should be kinder to the disabled, Namie."

She threw him a look so loaded with disgust that Mikado felt it crawl up his back in a shudder.

He had known that Yagiri Namie was working for Izaya, but he hadn't met with her since that day in the crowd of the Dollars' first meeting and hadn't been contacted by her since the mess with the gun either. He made use of the uneasy silence to look between the two of them and wonder at the sort of relationship they had. They didn't act like lovers or friends did.

Yet there was awareness between them, in the way they slipped glances toward each other as if to make sure the other hadn't vanished into thin air in the seconds they weren't looking.

In the end Izaya was the one to speak again, leveling a gentler stare with Mikado. "I'm not interested in that new urban legend of yours. I'll take the name for now, Mikado-kun."

"And you'll stay?" Mikado asked hopefully.

Izaya sighed. "Long enough to be noticed by a few more people, I'm sure."

"Okay." His nerves seemed to settle at last. "The name Aoba-kun heard of was Lizard. I'm not sure how much help it'll be, but…"

He trailed off. There had been a glimpse of understanding on Izaya's face for a fraction of time, barely perceptible.

As if to mask it, Izaya smiled mockingly in his direction. "Very well. Sozoro will see you out, Mikado-kun, and I hope you don't take it personally when I ask you not to come by again."

"Of course," Mikado replied hesitantly. "I hope you find your sister, Izaya-san."

His chest was hurting badly now. He was thinking of the way back as he turned around and met the eagle-sharp eyes of the man named Sozoro, wondering if he'd manage to find a seat on the train or if he would have to spend the ride hunched over and trying not to pull at the sensitive scars littering him. The night promised to be painful.

"Mikado-kun," Izaya called.

Mikado stopped and look back.

Izaya's face was… maybe not pensive. Far-away. Like a veil had been placed between them. "A word of advice," he said softly. "You give away more than you think. I'm letting you off easily because I'm fond of you, but don't think next time I won't take advantage of how green you are."

_I haven't let the truth about Mizuchi-kun slip out, have I?_ Mikado thought, queasiness gripping him in the stomach. "I'm not an information broker, Izaya-san," he replied as pleasantly as he could.

"No, you're not," Izaya replied. "But it's always a good idea to keep what you know under lock and key. And you know a lot."

He didn't.

Mikado wasn't into the thick of things anymore. He was happy at school, happy with Anri, content with watching Aoba sink deeper into a world that Mikado had realized was not meant for him. He sated the bottomless hole in himself with the margins of the unknown and grabbed life with both hands, day after day, goal after goal.

He just thought it might be easier to fool himself into believing it if Masaomi was by his side.

Thinking of the push he had given to make the present situation happen—something Izaya didn't have an inkling of—he said: "Welcome back, Izaya-san."

The smile on his face was plump with nerve and delight. It was the kind of smile that had made sweat shine on Aoba's brow, once upon a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a transition chapter, but things are going to get exciting again soon...!  
> I'm sorry for the long wait. I grew a planet-sized obsession with Bungou Stray Dogs and made the mistake of thinking "haha what if I wrote a short fic for my new OTP". Reasonable wordcounts? In MY writing? The thing is 26k words and not finished yet.  
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter anyway! Don't hesitate to drop me a nice word if you did. If you follow any of my social media you know how much I struggle to write NJ.


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